Name: Arrai Sopa (Rich Fish Soup)
Yield: 6 Serves
Cuisine: Spain
Ingredients: 4 bay leaves; a handful of parsley, stalks reserved and leaves roughly chopped; 800 g (1 lb 12 oz) raw prawns (shrimp), peeled and deveined, leaving the tails intact and reserving the heads and shells; 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) brandy; 2 leeks, white part only, finely sliced; 1 brown onion, finely sliced; 10 black peppercorns; 1.8 kg (4 lb) heads and bones of white fish such as snapper or whiting; 230 ml (7¾ fl oz) extra virgin olive oil, plus extra, to drizzle; 4 tomatoes, roughly chopped; 250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) white wine; 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) clams, rinsed; 1 garlic bulb, halved, plus 5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced; 3 carrots, diced; 400 g (14 oz) fillet of skinless wahou or blue-eye trevalla, cut into large chunks; 2 × 400 g (14 oz) tins chopped tomatoes, puréed

Preparation info

6
Serves

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

MoVida Rustica

By Frank Camorra and Richard Cornish

Published 2009

About

THE THINGS YOU DO FOR RESEARCH… A CHEF TOLD ME ABOUT ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE BARS IN A FISHING TOWN WHERE THE CHEF MAKES AN ASTOUNDING FISH SOUP. IT WAS IN AN AREA WHERE BASQUE SEPARATIST FLAGS FLY AND THE BARS FILL WITH SMOKE AND MEN. MY BUSINESS PARTNER AND I FOUND THE PLACE AND ORDERED A BOWL OF SOUP BETWEEN US. MAY I JUST SAY THAT REAL’ BASQUE MEN DON’T SHARE SOUP. MAY I ALSO ADD THAT DISPARAGEMENT HAS A TONE THAT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD NO MATTER WHAT THE LANGUAGE. STILL, IT WAS WORTH IT. THIS