Mince 2 leeks and 2 onions and sauté them for a few minutes in several soup spoons of olive oil. Then add 2 chopped tomatoes and continue cooking for a minute, stirring with a wooden spoon. Then add 2 cloves of garlic, mashed, a branch of fennel, a bay leaf and some orange peel, fresh or dried. Pour over 2 litres of water. Now add a kilo of rock fish, that is fish found around rocks, such as small crabs, rascasse or scorpion fish, of which there are many varieties in the United States, rouget or mullet, a slice of congre or conger eel, girelle or rainbow wrasse, and roucaous, or, as a substitute in North America, damsel fish or parrot fish, and in Great Britain corkwing or rock cook. If some of these fish are not available you can use fish like sea bass or lotte (monkfish) , but the whole point is to use lots of small, inexpensive fish (if any fish is inexpensive nowadays). Do NOT use oily fish like sardines or mackerel. Now bring the soup to a rapid boil and cook on a high fire for about 15 minutes. Then strain the broth into another pan, and pass the fish and vegetables through the food mill over the broth. Bring the soup to the boil then add a generous pinch of saffron. If you wish you can add a handful of vermicelli and continue cooking gently until the pasta is done. Et voila.
In France you put rouille on a crouton, put it upside down into the soup and, if you wish, add some grated parmesan.
Here is the recipe for rouille. Mash together (or purée in a robot) 2 cloves of garlic and 2 hot red peppers, and a handful of white bread, previously soaked in water and squeezed dry. Then add 2 soup spoons of olive oil and 2 dl of fish soup broth. And there is your rouille. You can also add hot red peppers to a garlic mayonnaise and then add some fish soup broth and use as you would the rouille.
Where to buy your fish in Avignon? At La Marée Provençale in Les Halles. The pile of fish in the photo shows the rock fishes.
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