Rustic Fish Soup (/w Alternative Ingredients for Vegetarians)

This soup takes it home by being simple, easy to prepare, aromatic, rustic and flavorful.

Serve it with a nice bread, or on top of rice....or do both. Beat those wintry blues with somethin' warm, nutritious and hearty in your mouth.

This recipe makes about 6 portions.

Step 1: What Do We Need?

• 4 shallots (or you can go with one red onion)
• 2 or 3 sticks of celery
• ½ of a small bulb fennel
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• 1 large fresh red chilli or 2 small dried chilies (remove the seeds if you don't like the heat)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil and a bit more just for drizzling
• 1 cup of red wine
• 800g (about one can) of chopped plum tomatoes
• ½ of a butternut squash, peeled and grated
• 500ml fish stock (substitute for this vegetarian option)
• 200g salmon fillet (Substitute for roasted red and yellow peppers)
• 300g skinned fillet of your preferred white fish. I used tilapia fillet. (substitute for roasted eggplant)
• 12 raw peeled shrimp/prawns (substitute for halved, brown, button mushrooms)
• ½ lemon
• 1 bunch of green onion and/or fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, to garnish 
• Salt and pepper to taste.

Step 2: Aromatics

• Heat your pot with 2 tbsp of olive oil.
• Finely chop your aromatics.
  • 4 shallots (or you can go with one red onion)
  • 2 or 3 sticks of celery
  • ½ of a small bulb fennel
  • 3-4 cloves of garlic
  • 1 large fresh red chilli or 2 small dried chilies (remove the seeds if you don't like the heat)
• Put your aromatics into your heated pot with a dash of salt and sweat them for 10-15 minutes or until translucent.
• In the meantime, chop or grate the squash.

Step 3: The Wet Stuff

• Add wine, tomatoes, squash and stock to your pot and bring it to the boil.
• Cover the pot and simmer gently for 30 minutes.
• Break up the tomatoes if necessary. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
• Use an emulsion blender (one of these guys) to break up the chunks of squash if you didn't grate it a step ago. Make sure to leave the soup chunky though, remember: it's rustic.
• Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Step 4: Fishy Bits

You're almost there.

• Now is the time to make the rice (if you want rice with your soup).
• Skin the salmon, but don't throw away the skin. Remove the shell and tail from the prawns/shrimp, if they have them.
• Roughly chop the white fish and the salmon.
• Put the seafood in the pot with the soup, except for the salmon skin, and simmer for about  10 minutes, or until the seafood is cooked.
• While the seafood is cooking, you can take this time to prepare your garnishes...

Step 5: Garnishes

• Fry your salmon skin on both sides until it is crispy.
• Dice your green onion or parsley.
• Cut the crispy salmon skin into thin strips. 

Step 6: Plating

Now it is time for plating your meal. You can plate however you wish, but I will make a suggestion below:

• Start with a ladle-full of rice in the center of your bowl.
• Ladle spoonfuls of soup, mostly liquid and vegetables around the rice mound.
• Top the rice mound with 1 or 2 full ladles of soup with large chunks of the fish and shrimp.
• Sprinkle the green onion over everything.
• Place the strips of crispy salmon skin on the mound in the center.
• Drizzle lemon juice and olive oil over everything.