Le bouillabaisse de ma mère est meilleur que le bouillabaisse de votre mère.

Can’t you just hear the French schoolchildren taunting one another? Much as we play the “my Dad’s tougher than your Dad” game here in North America, one expects children in the south of France to try to one up each other over bouillabaisse.

Because every family has their own recipe. And every family’s recipe is a closely guarded secret. What I found in my Googling adventure in an attempt to track down a bouillabaisse recipe is that they can vary greatly. The only commonalities are fish, tomato, orange peel and saffron; everything else is up for grabs.

This is very much the same in Atlantic Canada where every family has a chowder recipe, and every kid is certain that their family’s chowder recipe trumps all others. Nobody makes fish chowder like my Dad (well, except for me), and it was an alternative to my Dad’s recipe that got me thinking about bouillabaisse.

Continue reading “Le bouillabaisse de ma mère est meilleur que le bouillabaisse de votre mère.”