Soupe au Pistou and Thon à la Provençale

The busy school year is about to start again, and so this cooking project must come to an end. In fact, I had to skip last week because of an important deadline. For my last meal, I wanted to include a friend who is vegan, which posed the challenge of finding a vegetarian recipe in MAFC that could also be prepared without dairy. I landed upon soup au pistou, a vegetable soup with a garlic, basil, and herbs mash. Julia and co. describe this recipe as an early summer dish originating from the Mediterranean region of France and made distinctive by the pistou sauce. The soup begins with boiling carrots, potatoes, onion, and white beans until tender and then adding green beans, broken spaghetti, and crumbled stale white bread a for the last 15 minutes. The recipe also calls for a pinch of saffron in the soup, but that was outside of my means.

Plain soup

Pistou

The pistou is prepared alongside the soup by mashing four cloves of garlic with tomato purée, fresh basil, Parmesan cheese, and “fruity olive oil.” Tangent – if I haven’t mentioned it before, the wonders of genuine, Mediterranean olive oil are endlessly delicious. I would direct anyone interested to the book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller for a full discussion. Anyway, these ingredients are combined and the oil slowly beaten into the paste. When the soup is finished, one cup is beaten gradually into the pistou, and then the rest of the soup is poured into the tureen. For my vegan friend, I simply omitted the pistou from her portion. As suggested, I served the soup with hot French bread – mmm.

 

Soup with pistou added - see how the color changed!

To accompany this soup, I prepared another dish from the south of France, thon à la Provençale. I was able to find decent frozen tuna steaks at my local grocery store and merely thawed them in the refrigerator for a day. The recipe instructed the blending of salt and lemon juice in a backing dish then beating in olive oil and pepper. The fish was then placed in the dish, basted with the marinated, covered, and refrigerated for 1.5 to 2 hours while turning and basting several times. I then drained and dried the fish and sautéed it in hot olive oil to brown each side. The steaks were then placed back in the baking dish.

Next, I peeled and seeded three pounds of tomatoes using the techniques described in MAFC. They instruct blanching the tomatoes for 10 seconds then the skin is easily peeled. They then suggest slicing the tomatoes in half crosswise to extract the seeds by gently squeezing. For the tuna, I then chopped the tomato pulp and added it to minced yellow onions that had been sautéed. Adding mashed garlic, oregano, thyme, salt, and pepper and simmering covered for 5 minutes added the distinct Mediterranean flavor. The mixture was then spooned over the fish and brought to a simmer on the stovetop. I baked the fish for 15 minutes then added a cup of dry white wine and continued baking for another 30 minutes. After the fish was removed from the oven, the authors instructed boiling down the sauce until it was reduced and stirring in tomato paste. I skipped beating in a paste of butter and flour, but topped it with chopped parsley. This may seem like a lot of fuss for a piece of fish, but these tuna steaks were absolutely worth the effort and will certainly be cooked again.

Tuna with sauce

My friends Ami, Rachel, and Doug joined me for this meal and brought berries and vegan cream puffs. The cream puffs disappeared so quickly I barely had time to snap this picture of the few left at the end! We all enjoyed this hearty dinner from la Provençe.

 

Full meal

Last of the vegan cream puffs!

With this post my exploration into French cooking through weekly meals with friends and family has come to an end. While I will no longer be writing regularly about my cooking experiences, be assured that I will continue exploring new recipes and refining the techniques to which I have been introduced. This experience has deepened my appreciation for French food and widened my ability to replicate some of the most highly regarded dishes in the world. If I find time in the future, this blog may be rejuvenated, but for now, à la prochaine.