DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997                TAG: 9704090117

SECTION: FLAVOR                  PAGE: F1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JIM RAPER, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  108 lines

KETTLES BUBBLE WITH FISH SOUPS ``UNDESIRABLE'' CREATURES OFTEN SOUGHT FOR FRENCH COASTAL FAVORITE

ON A WEEKDAY afternoon a fishing boat, fresh from the Mediterranean, ties up along the seawall of the French village of Port Vendres. Its crew sets to the task of sorting the catch. Whiting, mackerel, sea bream, sole, rascasse, rouget, eel, squid and octopus are stacked in red tubs and hefted ashore to be offered for sale.

While the tubs are being carried to market tables, villagers follow, examining, pointing, poking, virtually putting ``sold'' signs on the fish they intend to buy. But the savvy shoppers remain behind at the trawler.

Their eyes are on a slimy pile of fish - still on the deck - that for one reason or another are not market quality. Some are mangled, but most are simply too small, too bony, or too strange tasting.

A burly fisherman scoops up shovels full of the rejected fish and totes them to the rail, where the savvy folks are waiting with pails and plastic bags. These are not beggars who are catching the fish as they fall from the shovel. Some look downright prosperous. And they are discriminating in an ironic sort of way, knowing which fishes to keep and which to throw to the gulls.

It's possible that they wouldn't trade their odd assortments of free fish for $10-a-pound sole, because many cooks along the French coastlines believe it takes these bony, little creatures to make authentic fish soup.

From Menton, a stone's throw from Italy, to Port Vendres near the Spanish frontier, kettles bubble daily with fish soup or stew. They can be vastly different, yet most, if not all, come with a creation story that begins something like this: Long ago, there were humble fishermen who could afford to eat only the dregs of their catches.

Today, someone who pays $50 for bouillabaisse at a fine restaurant in Marseille or on the Cote d'Azur might find it hard to believe that this most famous of fish soups had such humble origins. Throughout France, fish soups and stews are not only on the menus of elegant restaurants but also are among the costlier dishes. And there are reasons why they cost what they do.

Even bony rock fishes, when of reasonable size, can cost a restaurateur $6 a pound, and rascasse, the ugly scorpion fish that is indigenous to the Mediterranean and said to be essential to good fish soup, costs even more. Centuries ago the rascasse may have been shunned by fish buyers, but today these fishes are priced like gold.

Other ingredients such as cream and saffron also come at a dear price.

Bouillabaisse and other expensive fish soups are prepared with great care and served with great ceremony. Much of that effort is put into the task of deboning, something that ancient fishermen wouldn't have fussed with but that modern diners demand.

At a waterside table in Sete a skilled waiter serves ``soupe de poissons,'' which tastes wonderfully fishy but has no flesh, and no bones to disturb its velvety texture. Then he brings out a platter of five fishes that have been poached in the soup.

With two serving spoons he deftly filets the fishes and arranges the boneless flesh with the flair of an artist in the diner's soup bowl. This is a heavenly bouillabaisse, but it doesn't come cheap.

More like home cooking is the informal ``bullinada'' bash thrown by a Catalan social club at a rustic banquet hall in Banyuls, a seaside village three miles from Port Vendres. Club members, some from France and some from Spain, arrive with bowls and spoons. They've also brought goblets to use in drinking the local Collioure rose and rouge, as well as the Port-like Banyuls fortified wines.

They have hired a rag-tag but extraordinarily efficient gang from a nearby fishing village to prepare the bullinada and the cooks are working their magic in the open air. They have three cast-iron kettles on hooks over wood fires in the alley beside the banquet hall.

The wind called the ``tramontane'' is howling at about 60 miles per hour off the Pyrenees, blowing embers every which way, but this is only a minor inconvenience to these veteran cooks.

First they rub a hunk of slightly rancid pork fat on the inside of the kettles. ``Very, very important,'' says one of the younger cooks, ``important like the smoke flavor from the fire.'' Next come buckets of potato, peeled and in quarter-inch slices, and lots of garlic cloves. (The recipe calls for an amount of potatoes equal to the weight of the fish and seafood, and at least a couple of garlic cloves per diner.) Water, salt, pepper and a liberal dose of olive oil are added, and the cooking commences.

After the kettles are to boil, all sorts of fish and seafood are thrown in, added at intervals according to the time each needs to cook. Some fish are cut into steaks, but most go in whole. Tiny green crabs, too small to eat but tasty to suck on, are tossed in as a flavoring ingredient. Last to be added are ``gambas'' (shrimp).

Cooking time is hardly more than an hour. The thick, white, fish soup is transferred to serving pots and lugged into the hall, where eager diners wait, bowls in hand, to file by and claim their shares.

Different people have different ways of attacking the feast. Some want to start with only the potato-enriched broth, perhaps ladled over toasts that they have rubbed with garlic. They will return to the serving pots later for a second course of whole fish, fish steaks and shrimp. Others pile a little of everything into their bowls at once.

No matter which way the eating proceeds, it is a slurping, bone-picking, finger-licking free-for-all, no prettier than a Chesapeake Bay crab feast. Great pyramids of fish heads, bones and shells have to be cleared from the tables before the serious drinking, cigar smoking and dancing can begin.

Still, the symphony of tastes has been well worth the trouble and the mess. Perhaps a bullinada is not for everyone, but it would be hard to imagine a seafood lover turning down a bowl of it. MEMO: Jim Raper, former wine columnist for Flavor, is spending a year in

France researching articles on food and wine. He is headquartered in

Port Vendres. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

GEORGES MICHEL

A cook adds shrimp to bullinada at a party in Banyuls, France,

thrown by Catalan social club.

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