Wild Atlantic Seafood Soup

For our weekly Saturday night dinner day, my pretty Irish lass suggested a meal from our favorite cookbook, My Wild Atlantic Kitchen. So we set our sights on Wild Atlantic Seafood Soup.

I took a HUGE detour on this recipe for 2 reasons.

#1, I live in a town with few options at the store

#2, I don’t like fennel, star anise or tarragon

I’ll run the recipe in full, but will note my departures with (*).

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive

• 2oz butter

• 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

• 6 shallots, finely chopped (*used four)

• 1 leek, washed and finely chopped

• 1 fennel bulb, finely chopped (*used ½ if the bulb)

• 2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped

• 1 tbsp tomato puree (*half a can of tomato paste)

• 1140m1 / 2 pints shellfish stock (*I made my standard stock, water, shrimp shells, peppercorns, onion, celery, bay leaf, a little salt, simmered for an hour then strained)

• 4 ripe tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped (*used 3)

• Zest of 1 orange

• 2 tsp chopped thyme leaves

• 2 tsp chopped tarragon leaves (*left out)

• 1/4 tsp fennel seeds (*left out)

• 3 star anise, wrapped and tied in muslin (*left out)

• 1/2 tsp saffron threads

• 1/2lb crab meat (*I used a pint of crab claw)

• 2 lb fresh fish, skinned and chopped [e.g. a mixture of sea bass, John Dory, haddock or cod. The sea bass and John Dory cook more slowly than haddock and cod, so need to be chopped into smaller pieces]. (*the only white fish at my store was tilapia, I bought about a pound)

• ½ lb Atlantic prawns, cooked and shelled (*used a bag of frozen medium shrimp)

• 1 large lobster, cooked and sliced [optional] (*I used a bag of faux crab legs cut in 1” sections, and it turned out to be a surprisingly good substitute)

• Sea salt and cracked black pepper, to taste

Directions

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil and butter over a low heat. Add the garlic, shallots, leek, fennel and carrots and sweat, covered, for 15 minutes or until the vegetables have softened, stirring occasionally. Remove the lid and add the tomato purée then the stock, tomatoes, orange zest, thyme, tarragon, fennel seeds, the star anise and saffron. Turn up the heat and bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the crab meat and fish and cook for 5 minutes to cook through, stirring occasionally.

Serve with 3-4 cooked prawns per bowl with a few slices of lobster each.

The leeks turned really soft and almost replicated the texture of pasta. Next time I’m  going to cut them lengthwise in 4” strips.

It was a memorable meal, easy to prepare and didn’t take too long to work up. In short, another wonderful dinner date with my wonderful lady.