Fresh as paint

This week, the importance of parties as deadlines as we finally decorate the kitchen. Plus a recipe for Sète’s famous fish stew, bourride, with a menu and an easy workplan to get it all on the table.

Bourride à la Sétoise

I apologise for the brief silence. It’s a challenge being a cook when you have no kitchen to cook in. There’s a limit to the appeal of salads hastily assembled on top of the dishwasher while hoping they won’t be too liberally seasoned with plaster dust.

My nephew and his divine fiancé Olivia are getting married here in a month and we’ve been racing to complete a few projects in the house, finishing a new guest room and dollying up the kitchen. I’ve long believed a party is the best possible domestic deadline. Having people over? Suddenly that towel rail gets put up, the light bulb changed, those winter coats moved from the hallway so you don’t have to fight your way past them when it’s 35°C outside.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my little kitchen with its mismatched tiles and bright blue stove. I love it with all my heart, as long as I don’t look up. Above the tiles that cover the bottom half of the walls, the once-pale-green paint is grey with old grease and by the window, there is some mystery vent in the wall that has all the hallmarks of a late Friday afternoon hack job. There is a small staircase off the kitchen which leads to the cellar. I wanted to remove the door and incorporate the space into the kitchen, putting up some Julia Child inspired pegboard to hang my pans from. The walls to the staircase have deep gouges in the plaster where at some point, a large dog must have been shut in. It feels good to get rid of them, to smooth over that sadness with new plaster, and then with a couple of coats of Farrow & Ball Setting Plaster (231) Modern Emulsion. You can take the girl out of Hackney, and so on.

This is an interim freshen up, a little Botox and filler as opposed to the full face lift. Next year, we’ll remodel the kitchen and its adjoining pantry, but for now it feels very good to wash its little face. I’ll share some more pictures with you as we go along if you like. But here are a few to show what we’ve done so far.

The kitchen on the day we bought the house.

Half of the kitchen moved out onto the terrace so we can start painting.

No, honestly, it’s really restful.

Starting to come together, with two coats of emulsion on the walls and the first coat of eggshell on the doors.

These shell tiles are definitely one of the top five reasons for my moving to France.

I’ve opened up this little staircase off the kitchen and I’m going to line the walls with pegboard to store my pans. In a small kitchen, you have to use every bit of space.

Before the walls came crumbling down, I made the bourride I’m sharing with you today (along with the idea for a menu built around the bourride, and a plan of action to get it onto the table without breaking a sweat).

Bourride is a sublime fish stew from the Languedoc and Provence, a sort of simpler bouillabaisse – less cripplingly expensive to make, less work, but just as delicious in its own, distinctive way. It’s subtle and comforting, but smart enough for company too, especially as it’s substantial enough to serve as a main course on its own. The version I’m sharing with you is Bourride à la Sétoise, the kind they make in Sète, the port on the other side of the Etang de Thau from us. Bourride (from borrida, the Occitan word for boiled) is made from white fish – cod, sea bream, sea bass, monkfish – but in Sète, it’s made almost exclusively with monkfish. The soup is thickened and seasoned with egg yolks and aïoli. If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on the monkfish liver too, that’s either stirred into the stew or spread on croûtons to serve alongside, a little like the croûtons spread with rouille bobbing in classic soupe de poisson. I was shopping late the other day, so I couldn’t get the liver, but tant pis, it was still incredibly good. I really hope you enjoy it.

Bourride à la Sétoise

If you have some fennel, you can add that to the vegetables if you like, and in winter, sometimes cooks add a stem of sliced chard, with some of the green leaf still clinging to it. I added samphire, because it was right there on the counter, but it’s not essential or traditional.

Serves 4-6

800g-1kg monkfish – get the fishmonger to give you the head if you can