Name: Fish soup
Yield: Serves 4-6
Ingredients: 150 ml red wine; 1 bay leaf; 1.5 litres fish stock (or a good-quality fish stock cube dissolved in hot water); good pinch of saffron; good pinch of saffron strands; 3 peeled garlic cloves, crushed; salt and freshly ground black or white pepper; 5 black peppercorns; 1 small potato (about 125 g), peeled and roughly chopped; 150 g can of chopped tomatoes; a few sprigs of thyme; 3 tbsp tomato purée; 1 baguette, sliced at an angle and toasted, to serve (optional); 2 juniper berries; 1 thick slice of white bread, crusts removed and torn into pieces; 1 egg yolk; ½ red pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped; 3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil; 3 garlic cloves, chopped; ½ leek, well rinsed, trimmed and roughly chopped; ½ fennel bulb, roughly chopped; 1 small onion, roughly chopped; 2 tbsp olive oil; 500 g fish (heads, tails and all) as on the left, roughly chopped; 3 tbsp vegetable oil; cayenne pepper; 1 tsp lemon juice

Preparation info

Serves
4-6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Fish etc.

By Mark Hix

Published 2004

About

This is a perfect way to use up fish that’s a bit too bony or doesn’t have enough flesh to hold its own on a plate. Otherwise, if you are lucky enough to have a good fishmonger, he will probably sell his own ‘fish soup mix’, which will contain things like rascasse, conger eel, rockfish, gurnard - all the bony fish that are full of flavour. As the soup is blended and strained, the bones don’t matter. You can use a wide range of fish, however, as long as you have several varieties and try to