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East Africa and the Islands · Volume 18, The Indian Ocean Islands

Bouillon de brèdes, and the fricassée

Réunion

Bouillon de bredes, and the fricassee: a thin clear pale gold broth in a wide bowl, crowded with just collapsed mixed green leaves and pale sliced onion, a few discs of ginger.

Illustration

Time
30 minutes

This is the whole argument in a single pot. Trimmed leaves into a broth already scented with onion and garlic, boiled, served with rice and a preserved chilli, eaten in the evening. In Madagascar with beef in it, that is romazava. In the Seychelles it is bouyon bred. It travelled to Réunion in the holds of slave ships and it is still what people cook on a Tuesday. There are two preparations of brèdes and only two: the bouillon above, and the fricassée, where the leaves are sautéed fast with garlic and spice.

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 30 minutes.

Ingredients

  • 600 g mixed brèdes, trimmed, or callaloo and pea shoots in Britain
  • 1 onion, sliced
  • 3 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 20 g fresh ginger, sliced
  • 2 tbsp neutral oil
  • 1 L water or light stock
  • to taste salt
  • to serve preserved chilli

Method

  1. If any of your greens are morelle, or any Solanum, boil them separately first and throw that water away. This is Rung 3 and it is not negotiable.
  2. Sweat the onion, garlic and ginger in the oil until soft and just golden.
  3. Add the water or stock and bring it to a boil.
  4. Add the brèdes and boil. Not simmer. This preparation is a boil, and it is short.
  5. Salt, and serve with rice and a chilli condiment on the side.

Notes

For the fricassée, instead: heat the oil hard, garlic in, leaves in, toss fast over high heat until collapsed and glossy, out of the pan immediately.

What a modern chef changes

The leaves graded, the blanch water used, and the fat quantified

Rungs 3 and 1

Method

  1. Grade the leaves by toughness and cook them in three waves. Stems and thick ribs first, main leaves second, tips and buds last, roughly 6 minutes, 3 minutes, 1 minute. A basket cooked as one thing is always partly overdone and partly raw, and that is the failure that makes a British attempt at brèdes taste of nothing in particular.
  2. Use the blanch water only when it is safe to. For morelle, discard it. For chouchou shoots, pea shoots, watercress or callaloo it is full of flavour, so blanch, lift the leaves out, and build the bouillon on that liquid. You are separating a safety step from a flavour step instead of running them together.
  3. Measure the oil rather than pouring it. Two tablespoons to 600 g of leaf is a real ratio, and Rung 3 says why. Under-oiling brèdes is the commonest way a health-conscious British cook makes them worse.
  4. Roussir the base, even here. Rung 1. It is a vegetable bouillon with no meat in it, so the only savoury depth available is what you build in the first five minutes.
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