Anthony Bourdain’s classic bistro recipes – steak, soup, mussels

Photographs by Romas Foord

Les Halles was named after the old central marketplace of Paris and inspired by the blood-streaked bistros that crowded around it. Accordingly, the cookbook does not apologise for its carnivorous instincts; one section, focusing on tripe and other “nasty bits” of the animal, is entitled Blood and Guts. The writing here is similarly brawny, but despite the odd line that betrays its mid-2000s origins, it’s a pleasure to find how well the book has aged. Much of that is down to his enthusiasm for his craft and his desire for the reader to succeed with the recipes. His section on mise en place (“meez”) and the importance of kitchen preparation is the best – and most entertaining – I’ve ever read.

The book plunges us back to a time and place that’s easy to romanticise: pre-crash New York, when eating at a French or any other kind of restaurant didn’t need to break the bank. (Les Halles closed its doors in 2017, the year before Bourdain died by suicide.) In his introduction to the new edition, Fergus Henderson evokes a restaurant that was “steamy and busy, full of people who had come for food, fun and to enjoy their lives. When I think of the place, it’s of a table brimming with empty glasses, cigarette packets and the fiery dregs of a bottle of eau de vie.” He recalls Bourdain commanding the room, seemingly everywhere at once. “He spoke an amazing amount, his energy and knowledge was stupendous. The dishes kept coming. There was a feeling of more, always more.”

Bourdain wasn’t in the business of reinventing or – that dreaded word – elevating classic French dishes at Les Halles. “The recipes, for the most part, are old standards,” he wrote in the cookbook, “versions of which you can find in scores of other books.” What’s different is that they were written by him – a chef turned writer whose respect for the origins of skate grenobloise, tarte alsacienne and any number of other dishes was matched by the freshness, forthrightness and humour with which he brought them to life on the page.

A French vegetable soup similar to minestrone. Pistou is similar to pesto. Most soups get better the next day. This is not one of them. Any time you’ve got pasta, zucchini (courgettes) incorporated in a soup, it’s going to get ugly the next day. Ditto basil paste. This lovely, colourful, fresh-tasting soup will turn a nasty army-fatigue colour by tomorrow. And the pistou will take over the soup. So eat it all now.

Serves 6

225g dried white beans
28ml olive oil
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced – as in Goodfellas
1 medium onion, diced small
450g seeded, chopped, fresh, ripe tomatos
2 leeks, washed thoroughly and cut into 6mm slices
2 small zucchini (courgettes), diced small (Only the outer parts of the zucchini and squash: do not use the seed cavities. Throw them out.)
2 small yellow squash, diced small
1 fennel bulb, diced small
900ml light chicken stock or broth
1 bouquet garni
75g elbow macaroni
salt and pepper

For the pistou
1 bunch of fresh basil leaves, picked, washed and dried
6 garlic cloves
118ml extra virgin olive oil
112g grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper

First: The day before you make the soup, soak the beans in plenty of cold water for 24 hours. Since you have time, you might consider making your own chicken stock at this point.

Next day: Put on some music. Drain and rinse the beans, then cook in either water or chicken stock until nearly done – meaning still a little hard in the middle. Do not cook the beans to mush, please. When ready, drain and rinse in cold water to arrest cooking. Put aside. You’ll need them later. Do all your knife work, meaning the dicing, slicing and so on.

Now we are ready to begin the actual cooking. Right? You’ve got everything? Assemble your prepped ingredients in an organised fashion. You’ve got your “meez” together? Let’s go …

In a large, heavy-bottomed pot, heat the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the garlic and onion and sauté on low heat for a few moments to release the flavours. When the onion begins to clear and become translucent, add the rest of the vegetables and continue to sauté on low heat (sweating them) until slightly soft. Add the chicken stock or broth and the bouquet garni and bring to a quick boil on high heat, then immediately reduce the heat until you have a nice, gentle simmer. Add the elbow macaroni and continue simmering until it’s nearly cooked through. Drop in the beans. Simmer, stirring occasionally, remembering to skim, skim, skim with the ladle to remove scum and foam.

While the soup is simmering, make the pistou. In a mortar and pestle, grind and pound the basil and garlic together until it becomes a sludge-like paste. With a fork, slowly incorporate the oil a little at a time. Fold in the parmesan at the end. Season with salt and pepper. You can, I suppose, cheat and use a food processor for this; plenty of, if not most, restaurants probably do. But that would be wrong.

After about 30 minutes, when the soup is ready (meaning the macaroni and the beans are cooked through but not mushy or overcooked, still maintaining their structural integrity), whisk in your pistou, salt and pepper to taste, and serve immediately.

Mussels are beautiful. Mussels are delicious. Mussels are easy as hell to cook. Just make sure you buy nice, fresh, still-living mussels. Wash them carefully in cold water, store them – if you are storing them – in the refrigerator, in a raised slotted pan or colander so they can be separated from whatever may drain out of them, and before beginning to cook, make sure that they are all closed. If there are open ones, tap them lightly and see if they then begin to close. If a few stay open and don’t respond? Throw those out.

Mussels should feel heavy and alive. If a mussel feels suspiciously light and hollow, even if closed, throw it out. If they smell like anything other than cold deep seawater, don’t buy them. Fresh mussels look black and shiny, the vast majority still tightly closed, and they smell good. Wild mussels often have “beards,” little hairy projections sticking out of the side of the shell. Tear these off by hand just prior to cooking (and no earlier). Most mussels you’ll find are cultivated anyway, so it’s unlikely you’ll have that problem.

All of the above being said, be assured that it is ridiculously easy to cook mussels. The “bang for your buck” factor with the following dish is very, very high: Dump stuff in a pot, cook for a few seconds, and drop into a bowl and you’ve got a great, good-looking comfort meal, perfect for summer afternoons or late- night, eat-with-your-hands wine-drinking marathons

Let’s say the boss is coming over for dinner, or a photographic team from Gourmet magazine is on its way to chronicle your swinging lifestyle. You might want to get artsy – and burn your fingers: When you yank your mussels off the fire, instead of just dumping them into a bowl – or eating them right out of the pot (both perfectly acceptable, fun ways to go) – you can stick your tender paws into the pot and quickly pick the mussels out and arrange them in a shallow, heated serving bowl. Spreading each shell open slightly and resting each mussel upright in a sort of tight floral or concentric pattern, starting with the outer layer and working inward and upward, you can (if you don’t burn your fingers too badly) make a cookbook-ready money shot of a presentation that will have your guests thinking you do this all the time.

Serves 4

112g slab bacon, cut into 1cm cubes
56g butter
1 shallot, thinly sliced
6 small white mushrooms, thinly sliced
½ apple, cored, peeled, and cut into small dice or chunks.
75ml good calvados
75ml heavy cream
salt and pepper
2.7kg mussels, scrubbed and debearded (just before cooking)

In a small pot, cook the bacon over medium-high heat until the meat is brown and the fat has been rendered, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid sticking. Discard the fat and reserve the meat.

In a large pot, heat the butter until it foams. Add the shallot and cook until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms and the apple and cook for 5 minutes, then stir in the calvados, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to dislodge any good brown stuff that might be clinging there. Stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper. Once the mixture has come to a boil, add the mussels and cover. Cook for 10 minutes, or until all the mussels have opened. Shake. Cook for another minute. Shake again. Serve immediately.

Long thought of as a “trash fish,” skate is one of the truly great seafood items: tender, sweet, well-textured. Cleaning it, meaning removing the delicate fillets from the cartilage (though it’s perfectly fine to cook it with cartilage intact) and the thick, rubbery skin (which must be removed), is tricky, so have your fishmonger do the work. Note also that skate, like other more delicate and subtle white-fleshed fishes, is very perishable. You want to buy it and cook it on the day it came in.

Serves 2

56g flour
salt and finely ground white pepper
2 skate wings, skinned and boned out
56g butter
14g capers
112g croutons
juice of 1 lemon
1 sprig of flat parsley, finely chopped
peeled, seeded segments of 1 lemon (optional)

Prep: Put the flour in a shallow bowl and season it with salt and pepper. Dredge the fish in the flour and shake off the excess. Re-season the fish with salt and pepper.

Cook: In the sauté pan, heat 14g of the butter over medium-high heat. When the butter has foamed and subsided, add the fish and cook over high heat for 2 minutes. Add another 14g of butter and turn the fish, cooking the other side for 2 minutes. Transfer the fish to the serving platter.

Finish: Discard the butter from the pan and then add the remaining 28g of butter. Cook over high heat until it foams and subsides, then add the capers and croutons. Cook for 30 seconds, then add the lemon juice and parsley. (You can add the lemon segments at this point as well.) Remove from the heat and spoon the sauce over the fish.

Red-wine butter can be used on just about any steak you grill. Keeping a few logs of the stuff in the freezer is a good idea, as you never know when your deadbeat friends are going to drop by demanding meat.

Serves 4

110ml red wine
1 shallot, finely chopped
225g butter, softened
1 sprig flat parsley, finely chopped
salt and pepper
4 x 225g New York strip steaks (trimmed sirloin steaks)
5ml oil

Make the red wine butter: In a small pot, combine the wine and shallot and bring to a boil over high heat. Cook until the wine has almost completely evaporated, taking care not to let the shallots burn. Transfer the mixture to the mixing bowl and let cool. In a food processor, add the softened butter, the shallot-wine mixture, the parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Scrape the butter out of the food processor with a rubber spatula and place in the centre of a large piece of plastic wrap. Gently form it into a 2.5cm-diameter log, shaping and squeezing and rolling it like you would roll a joint – or a nori roll. Don’t worry; you can’t mess it up. It’s like Play-Doh; you can always go back and do it again. When you’ve got it right, twist the ends of the plastic tightly and refrigerate in the rolled plastic until the butter is firm enough to slice.

Cook and serve the steaks: Take the steaks out of the refrigerator 10 minutes before cooking. Season the steaks with salt and pepper. Lightly brush them with the oil. Grill them, or cook them in the grill pan, to desired doneness. Put a slice of the red-wine butter on each steak just before serving.

Makes one 25.5cm crust

250g pastry flour
pinch of salt
20g sugar
125g butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
1 egg, beaten
20ml water

Method 1 – by hand: First, make sure you are working in a cool room, on a cool surface. Sift the flour onto a clean wooden board or into a large bowl, and add the salt and sugar. Use your hand to form a well in the centre of the mixture, about 8cm in diameter. Add the butter, egg and water, and knead the mixture together, using a pastry cutter or two butter knives. The goal is to evenly distribute the butter throughout the matrix of flour without causing it to melt. Form the dough into a ball and do not worry if some chunks of butter remain.

Method 2 – in a food processor: In the bowl of the food processor, combine the flour, salt, sugar, egg and butter and turn the machine on, processing until the ingredients form a cohesive whole. Keeping the machine on, add the water all at once, watching carefully so that you can turn off the machine as soon as the dough binds and comes away from the sides of the bowl.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Once you are ready to use the dough, remove from the refrigerator, unwrap, and press the dough down with the heel of your hand to flatten. Use a floured rolling pin to roll the dough out, on a floured work surface, to the desired thickness.

Roll out dough and line the pan: Working from the centre of the dough, use short, quick strokes with a rolling pin to get your dough to the desired thickness (which is about 6mm thick for most pies and tarts). Tears can be repaired by patting the dough back together with fingers, but take care to avoid too many patches, as this will interfere with the proper and even cooking of the dough.

When you’re ready to transfer the dough to your 25.5cm pan, gently fold the dough in half on itself (so that the circle becomes a half-moon), and gently lift and place it in the pan (which should not be very far away). Gently unfold the dough so that its shape roughly mirrors the shape of the pan. Use gentle pressure to pat the dough into the corners of the pan, and once you are satisfied that the dough is truly lining the pan, either fold over or cut away the excess.

Serves 8

42g butter
75g sugar
4 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1cm slices
4 eggs
110ml milk
110ml heavy cream
5g vanilla extract
1 25.5cm prebaked piecrust (see Basic pie dough, above)

Prep the apples: Preheat the oven to 150C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and grease the paper with 14g of the butter. Sprinkle the paper with 14g of the sugar and arrange the apples on the paper so that they do not overlap. Cut the remaining 28g of butter into very small pieces and dot the apples with the butter. Sprinkle another 14g of the sugar over the apples and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until the apples are soft but still holding their shape. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Prep the custard: In the mixing bowl, combine the eggs and the remaining sugar and whisk. In a small saucepan, combine the milk, cream and vanilla extract and bring it to a boil. Remove this mixture from the heat and slowly add it to the egg mixture, whisking constantly until it is all incorporated and the mixture is slightly thickened.

Assemble: Increase the oven heat to 180C. Line another baking sheet with parchment paper and place the piecrust on it. Arrange the apple slices in a circular pattern in the crust. The apples should fill up the shell. Pull the oven rack out halfway and place the baking sheet and crust on the rack. Now, carefully pour the custard mixture into the piecrust, filling to the top but not overfilling it. Carefully push the rack back into the oven and bake until the custard is set, about 25 minutes. Allow to rest for 15 minutes before serving. OFM

Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook (Bloomsbury, £30) is republished on 2 October. Preorder a copy for £27 at observershop.co.uk