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For this bouillabaisse fest (for 12 portions), you'll need: around 10 pound of white meat fish (redfish (ocean perch), red snapper, blue-mouth, rockfish, sea robin (gurnard), monkfish, cod, porgy (scup), grouper, halibut, haddock, dab, turbot, wreckfish, ocean pout (ling), cusk, wolffish (ocean catfish), tautog (blackfish), tilefish, sculpin), 4 pound of oily fish (bluefish, moray eel, conger eel, mackerel, shark, dogfish, striped bass, sea bass, kingfish, Spanish mackerel, mahimahi (dolphinfish)) (you should have at least 4 different kinds of fish), 2 pounds of mussels or clams, 1 lobster or 500g shrimp, 4-5 big onions, 2 garlic heads, a couple of fresh tomatoes, 1 red pepper, some dry white wine (Muscadet or Sancerre), 4 stalks of celery, 1 fennel head, 3-4 bouquet garnis (fresh thyme, black pepper, bay leaves and parsley), a couple of cloves (Nelkenköpfe), 1 orange, safran, clam juice, lemon juice, an egg, olive oil, french bread (baguette), red chili grounded, butter, 3 leeks, tomato paste, anise liquor (Ricard, Pernod, etc)

Try to get the gutted fish with heads and carcasses. If you can get nothing but filets, you'll need only a total of around 4-5 pounds and some fish broth. The preparation time takes 4-5 hours.

Filet your fish into byte size, then let them marinade in a saffron olive oil mix, chop the carcasses into pieces. Clean the shrimp and cut along their back removing the dark (and bitter) digestion tract and marinate them in olive oil with lots of garlic, add the shells along with the carcasses, fish heads and some of the fish meat into a big pot and cover it with 3-4 l of cold water. Add 2 of the bouquet garnis, fry some of the onions and add them to the pot. Add 200-300ml of the wine. Skim occasionally, after some heavy boiling let simmer for 2-3 hours. In the meantime, you can clean the mussels and put them back into cold water. If the broth is done, get some of the baguette, remove the white part, soak it in the broth, add it in a food processor, add lots of garlic, 300ml olive oil, 200g butter, red chili pepper powder, salt, an egg yolk, some fresh pepper and saffron and process for 30 sec. Then put to the fridge, this will be your rouille.
Strain the broth through a strainer, set aside. Heat lots of olive oil in the pot, add the onions, leeks, celery and fennel, the tomatoes and the garlic. Add the broth, squeeze in half an orange, add some of the clam juice and saffron steeped in some wine, and the rest of the bouquet garni. Bring down the heat, cook for an hour or so, add the clams and shrimp, then after 15 min the fish. Add the tomato paste and the anise liquor. Cook for another 10 minutes, then serve. Put the toasted baguette with some rouille on top. Enjoy! And remember, this is a very rich soup, so don't eat to much, or you'll thank me. Tastes even better one day later!