Rustic Fish Soup (/w Alternative Ingredients for Vegetarians)

by Justin Tyler Tate

3.6K1247

Intro: 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.

7 Comments

S_Alex77 10 years ago

This looks delicious!

Traumensie 10 years ago

I made a big pot of this last night and it is delicious and easy to make! I was a bit nervous because I had never cooked with fennel before (and I wasn't sure how much a *glass* of wine was!), but it came out delicious. Thanks for a yummy recipe!

Justin Tyler Tate 10 years ago

You're welcome and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Fennel is great but a very underused vegetable...in most places it goes underused.

loangb 10 years ago

I've been wanting to add fish to my diet - it isn't one of my favorite foods. But this recipe looks really good so will give it a try! Thanks for posting!

bob3030 10 years ago

Very nice. My son is in culinary school, so I forwarded this to him with a request that he make it for my birthday. Thanks for sharing.