Rouille

I'm not sure whether this is really what a Rouille is supposed to be. Alan Davidson is quite an advanced cook and expects his readers to be one too. He said nothing whatsoever of roasting and peeling the red peppers, so I didn't do it, nor did he mention that the bread was supposed to be stale, so I didn't use stale bread - but I do suspect that it should have been otherwise, which is why I'll make it again in two days, with roasted peppers and stale bread.

Correct or not, it was very delicious. I'm not entirely sure how using a mortar would have made me get to where I wanted to get, so I used a hand blender. After adding the bread and the olive oil, it was still relatively liquid, so I added an extra chunk of (dry, not soaked!) bread. With this addition, the consistency was exactly right, so I omitted the fish stock and just seasoned. You might choose to use only dry bread instead of soaked bread to better control the liquidity of the sauce.

It's hard to describe the taste of the Rouille - on the one hand it still tasted slightly watery, on the other the roaring garlic and the sweetness of the red peppers were really nice. As a sauce added to the soup, it was really nice and strong. Much better than the Rouille from the Essential Seafood Cookbook.

Edited to add: I made another version of the same Rouille again two days later - this time with stale bread and grilled and peeled red peppers. This Rouille strongly resembled the other Rouille, only that it was slightly less sweet. DB preferred the new, less sweeter version, I actually liked both.

Again the fish stock proved to be quite unnecessary as the Rouille achieved perfect texture without it. Because the bread was pretty stale, it needed to be soaked, so this is a possible indication that Davidson actually meant us to fill in the gaps in his recipe and use stale bread (and peeled peppers).

Edited 25 January 2018: Grilled peppers or not, stale bread or no stale bread - nothing as important as the garlic: use roasted garlic, or otherwise be very very careful with the quantity (no two large cloves!).