Sassy Southern Cooking with a French Twist

creamy soups

Elegant Oyster Bisque Kicks Off Christmas Dinner with Style

I like Christmas dinner to be a quiet, more subdued occasion than its more boisterous, often frenzied holiday meal counterpart, Thanksgiving.  I most enjoy small groups of four to six at an elegantly dressed table; meals plated and served by courses. It tends to slow everything way down, so that both eating and appreciation of special time with friends and family takes on the sacred glow and joy of Christmas.

And, what better way to kick it all off than with an elegant bisque? Creamy, silky, and rich, bisque just says screams special occasion dining. This recipe pairs the darlings of  cool weather southern dining (oysters) with the oft under-rated, humble parsnip.  The result is decadence in a spoon, sweet, creamy and simple. The parsnips add natural sweetness and fat-free girth to the soup.  Served piping hot in elegant, shallow bowls, it is the perfect way to start your Christmas dinner. The base can be prepared completely in advance and the bisque finished at the last second. This is a favorite from my cookbook, The French Cook – Soups & Stews (Gibbs Smith, 2014).

Bisque D’Huitres et de Panais

Oyster and Parsnip Bisque

(Makes 8 to 10 servings)

Oyster and Parsnip Bisque makes a majestic and easy start to your holiday meal. From The French Cook – Soups & Stews (Gibbs Smith) Photo by Chia Chong).

Parsnips and oysters may sound like odd bisque-fellows, but they actually make a lot of sense. Parsnips, like turnips, are sweet, lovely root vegetables frequently used in French kitchens.  Their sweetness plays beautifully with the oysters, and the starch in the parsnips gives a velvety texture to this heavenly bisque. Even better, since oyster shells don’t yield much in terms of flavor. The oyster flavor comes from the brine they’re stored in, as well as the oysters themselves, which are stirred into the bisque at the very end. If making this soup ahead, hold off and add the oysters and cream just before serving. Willapoint oysters, readily available in the brine in the refrigerator section of most fish counters at the grocery, are firm and meaty. Use the freshest raw oyster you can find, and don’t discard the brine except into the soup pot. It is one of the flavor keys to the bisque.

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 leek, trimmed to 1 inch above the white root, halved vertically, well rinsed and finely chopped

2 medium shallots, finely chopped (about 1 cup)

2 medium parsnips, peeled, quartered vertically, and finely chopped

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme leaves

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup dry vermouth, plus 1 tablespoon

1/2 cup good-quality Chardonnay

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

4 cups good-quality, low sodium boxed seafood/fish stock or homemade fish stock

1 cup finely chopped oyster or chanterelle mushrooms, touch feet removed

3 (8-ounce) packages Willapoint oysters (3 cups)

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme leaves

Method:

In a 5 1/2-quart Dutch oven or similarly sized soup pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the leek, shallots, parsnips, and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Stir to coat. Cook over medium heat, stirring several times, for 15 minutes, until all the vegetables have softened (do not let them color). Add the 1/2 cup vermouth, increase heat to medium-high, and cook down to a glaze, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the Chardonnay and cook down to a glaze, 1 to 2 minutes. Scatter the flour evenly over the pot and stir to combine. Whisk in the fish stock, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to medium/medium-low and cook uncovered for 15 minutes, skimming off any initial foam/scum that rises to the top.

Puree until frothy smooth with a blender or food processor. Return to the pot. Add the mushrooms, oysters, and cream. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, reduce to medium, and cook through for 5 to 8 minutes, until the oysters are firm and opaque. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed. Finish with 1 tablespoon of vermouth, if desired, and fresh thyme. Serve very hot.

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As always, wishing you and yours, happy cooking and a joyful holiday season.

Bon appetit!

Holly and Rocky

Author, Chef, Cookbook writer Holly Herrick

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A Reluctant Crustacean Killer and The Curious Case of Delicious Crab Bisque

When it comes to killing (unless you count mosquitoes) , I’m a wuss. I can’t even stamp out a palmetto bug (a.k.a. cockroach). Once, when I was twelve, while retrieving the mail from our mailbox in Florida, a pretty green lizard leaped out from the box into my face. Terrified,  I slammed the door shut, automatically decapitating the poor little guy.  I wept for hours, assembling his remains, burying them, and building a small cross out of twigs for his grave. At Le Cordon Bleu, on the day we were making eel stew, yours truly was handed one of the few live ones that slithered on my board as I tried, and failed, to cut off its huge head. Chef Jackie Martin had to rescue me, screaming and faint having somehow flown to the corner across the room, wrap the eel’s head with string, and bang it against the stainless steel cupboards until it was lifeless.  Twenty years later, I’m not sure I’ve yet recovered from that one.

Dogs, cats, cows, pigs, lambs, goats, horses – I love them all, really truly all of God’s creatures (though I still struggle with snakes). But its those spiny, ancient creatures of the cold Atlantic waters for which I have a special affinity and sympathy. I think it’s because I grew up outside of Boston and summers were always spent in Maine where lobster, steamers and drawn butter were regularly served to sate our young bodies, spent from hours playing in the sea. How I loved eating lobster then, as I do now, I just hated the killing part, and I still do. That’s why the little hypocrite in me lets someone else do it, though I did once rescue and release a 60 year-old lobster from the steamer tank into the waters off Rockport, MA which somewhere assuages my extreme lobster killer guilt.

All of that changed a few days ago. I was preparing to make and test lobster and a crab

Beautiful Boiled Lobsters (photo from lobsterfrommaine.com)

Beautiful Boiled Lobsters (photo from lobsterfrommaine.com)

bisque recipes for The French Cook: Soupes et Daubes (Gibbs Smith, September 2014).

Impossibly torn at the sheer joy of savoring one of my favorite things, a delicious seafood bisque (or two),  and the sheer horror of the inevitable: I was about to become a lobster and crab killer.  Because their internal organs and flesh rot very quickly and bacteria mounts fast when dead, these crustaceans really must be cooked alive. And, in the case of a bisque (of any kind) the shells are a crucial part of building the flavor. And, shells from a cooked lobster or crab, don’t give off the same flavor as shells from a raw lobster or crab, where the fresh, raw flavor seeps into the fumet as it cooks.

So, off I went to my affable advisors at the seafood counter at The Harris Teeter in downtown, Charleston, eye-balling a couple of handsome, pre-cooked lobsters. Full of hope, I told Doug what I was making and asked him (knowing the answer) if I could just use the pre-cooked guys. “No, you have to use live,” he said, resolutely.

Next stop, Crosby’s Seafood, uptown. The kind lady there plucked two, 1 3/4 pound beauties out of the tank (I couldn’t stop thinking about their already traumatic journey from the bottom of the craggy, cold Maine waters, to a trap, to a plane, and once again to this tank in SC), and now she was putting them in a paper bag. I asked her to double the paper (images of that eel enforcing images of  panicked pinchers breaking through), which she did, also wrapping it with plastic. Same for the poor crabs, though I felt less sorry for them somehow, for reasons I can’t explain. I confessed my concerns about limiting their pain, erasing it if at all possible. I couldn’t bring myself to do the one method Doug had recommended (sticking a knife between their primal, groping black eyes). She suggested something else. Put them in a freezer for about 30 minutes. This “puts them to sleep,” so going into the pot is less traumatic.

Hopeful, I asked my neighbor Lucie to house the crustaceans in her large freezer, while I prepared to cook them. I put on two large pots of salted water to boil.  By now trembling, I decided to start with the crabs because they were smaller and it would be faster. Well, that part proved true, but one of them almost successfully crawled out of the pot. I was able to get him back in there. Less than 10 minutes later, it was over. Now, it was time to tackle the big boys. It didn’t go well and I hesitate to explain it in detail (I didn’t even take pictures because I didn’t want to exploit them), but suffice to say, the first guy didn’t want to go in and he wasn’t asleep.  I had to take a fifteen minute time out to breathe and calm down, but now I was ready to make bisque.

The recipe that follows is made from fresh blue crab, thickened with a flour roux, and finished with cream, sweet lump crab meat, fresh thyme, Old Bay Seasoning and fresh thyme. It is sublime! If you, like me, suffer from crustacean killer guilt, keep in mind that you are using every single part of these creatures and absolutely nothing goes to waste – it’s purely crustacean bisque and so delicious it will make you cry, but in a good way. It may seem like a lot of work, and frankly it is. But, you can do it in three parts: 1) steam the crabs and strain the fumet base, 2) make the bisque base, strain and store overnight in the fridge, 3) finish the bisque in minutes the next day.Blue Crab Bisque with Old Bay Seasoning, Vermouth and Fresh Thyme

Blue Crab Bisque with Old Bay Seasoning, Vermouth and Fresh Thyme

Recipe

Blue Crab Bisque with Old Bay Seasoning, Vermouth and Fresh Thyme 

(Makes 6 to 8 servings)

To steam the crabs for the fumet base:

8 cups water

1 tablespoon salt

6 live blue crabs (about 3 pounds total)

For the bisque base:

4 tablespoons butter

1 leek, trimmed to 1″- above white base, halved horizontally, well rinsed and finely chopped

1 onion, peeled, halved and finely chopped

2 stalks celery, trimmed, and finely chopped

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Reserved shells from the crab fumet

3/4 cup dry vermouth

2 bay leaves

To finish the bisque:

2 tablespoons butter

1 large shallot, finely chopped

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning

3  tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 cup heavy cream

8 ounces (1 cup) lumb crab meat

Reserved meat from steamed blue crabs (about 1/4 cup)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme leaves

Start with the fumet base. Bring the water and salt up to a vigorous boil in a 5 1/2 quart Dutch oven or similarly- sized pot. Add the crabs all at once. Cover, and reduce to high simmer over medium high. Cook 8 minutes. Remove from the pot and set aside to cool. Strain the cooking liquid through a very fine sieve or Chinois into a large bowl. Set aside. When the crabs are cool, pull off their legs and set to the side of your work surface. Pull of their backs, rinse, and add to the shell pile. Pull the little tab up on the bottom of their bodies to release, remove (saving for shell pile), remove and discard the gills and rinse off any bitter green matter, or “tomalley.” Carefully, work inside the bodies to remove any sweet flesh and be attentive to removing and discarding any bits of shell or cartilage. Reserve the meat in the fridge. With a mallet or the bottom of a sturdy sauce pan, smash the reserved shells into smaller bits. This will help them to release flavor on the next step of the bisque journey, and probably the most important one, the bisque base.

To prepare the bisque base, melt the butter over medium heat in the same Dutch oven or pot, rinsed. Add the leek, onion, celery, a generous dash of salt and pepper, and Old Bay Seasoning. Stir to coat, cooking five minutes or until just softened. Add the flour, stir, and cook another minute. Add the reserved shells, stir to coat and cook 2 minutes. Add the Dry Vermouth, increase heat to high and cook down to a glaze. Add the reserved, strained fumet base, 2 bay leaves and a generous pinch salt. Bring up to a boil over high, reduce to a simmer over medium, medium low, cooking uncovered for 25 minutes, skimming off foam and elimating as you go. Strain through a China cap or fine sieve/colander into a large bowl, pressing hard against the solids to release flavor before discarding them.  Set the bisque base aside.

To finish the bisque, melt the butter in the same Dutch oven or pot, rinsed, over medium heat. Add the shallot, a dash of salt and pepper, and Old Bay Seasoning. Stir to coat and cook until just softened, 5 minutes. Add the flour, stir to coat and cook through one minute. Stir in the cream, lump crab meat, reserved blue crab flesh. Taste carefully and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Stir gently to avoid breaking up the crab. Serve steaming hot with a garnish of fresh thyme for each bowl.

Bon appetit!

 

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