Bouillabaisse

Start with the stock, because the stock is the whole dish disguised as a side task. Fish bones and shellfish shells aren't a garnish for flavour, they're the entire source of it — collagen and marine fat rendering out into the liquid over that twenty-minute simmer. Ask your fishmonger for bones when you buy the haddock; most will hand them over for nothing, because to them it's trim. If you can't get bones, a good shop-bought fish stock plus a few extra shrimp shells saved in the freezer gets you most of the way there — just don't expect the same body, since bones carry gelatine that pure stock usually doesn't.

The vegetable base — onion, leek, fennel, celery, garlic — is cooked gently until soft and translucent, not browned. This isn't aesthetics. Browning here would mean caramelised sugars fighting with the delicate saffron and seafood notes later; translucent means the vegetables have given up their water and sharpness without adding a competing flavour of their own. On a domestic hob that's a lowish flame and a lid ajar, long enough that a piece of fennel bends rather than crunches when you press it — that's your real signal, not a clock.

Saffron earns its reputation honestly, not mystically: it's the stamens of a crocus, hand-picked, three per flower, which is why it costs what it does and why a pinch is genuinely enough — more turns the soup medicinal rather than golden. If you don't have it, don't try to fake the colour with turmeric and call it the same dish; turmeric brings an earthy bitterness saffron doesn't have. Better to leave it out and let smoked paprika in the rouille carry the warmth and colour instead.

Straining through a clean cloth at the end is the unglamorous step people skip, and it's the one that separates a rustic bisque from an actual bouillabaisse. Those bones and shells, once they've given their flavour, are now just debris — tiny splinters you don't want in a spoon. A clean tea towel or a few layers of muslin over a sieve does the job; the stock should come out properly clear, almost like a consommé, not cloudy. Patience here isn't optional, it's the ingredient that makes the difference between a soup and a stock with bits in it.

The seafood itself is chosen for contrast of texture more than tradition: mussels for brine and bite, haddock (or any firm white fish — cod, hake, pollock all work, the only real criterion is flesh that holds together in simmering liquid rather than flaking apart) for substance, langoustines and prawns for sweetness, scallops for that seared crust you can't get any other way but a dry hot pan. None of this is fixed by law despite what some purists in Marseille will tell you — the dish was built on whatever the boats brought in that morning, which by definition changed daily. What doesn't change is the order of cooking: the firmest things go in the simmering soup first, mussels and prawns (already cooked) go in last just to warm through, and the scallops never go in the soup at all, because a hot liquid bath would turn that seared crust straight back to rubbery sponge.

Olive oil appears twice and means two different things each time — in the rouille it's the body of an emulsion, so use one with a flavour you actually like, since it's a third of what you're tasting; in the sauté it's just a cooking medium for vegetables, so there any neutral oil with no smell of its own does the job, sunflower or a mild rapeseed included. Don't spend your good oil frying onions.

Serve it the way it was handed out at the dock, ladle first, protein and potato dropped in afterwards, with toasted baguette slicked in rouille either floated on top or eaten alongside. Flaky salt at the very end, on the warm fish, not stirred into the pot — salt added early just seasons the liquid, added at the end it seasons what's actually going in your mouth, which is a different thing entirely.