Name: Primordial Soup
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Asian
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon salt; 40 g (1½ oz) dried kombu (this is giant kelp); 8 dried shrimp (those little pink things that you get in Asian shops; alternatively use ½ teaspoon blachan, which is dried shrimp paste); small piece of dried wokami seaweed (also available in Asian shops; a substitute for this is coarsely chopped watercress); 1.2 litres (2 pints) good fish stock; 8 raw prawns, peeled and cut in half; 1 tablespoon light soya sauce (or slightly more if you only have the dark soya sauce); noodles (optional)

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Potty!

By Clarissa Dickson Wright

Published 2010

About

The idea for title of this dish came about when I was at a picnic lunch at Gray’s Inn - more an al fresco lunch than a picnic really - and there was a very jolly woman there called Judith Rich, who had worked for many years as a professor of biology at the Natural History Museum in London. We were discussing the origins of life and she said, ‘I thought we all came from primordial soup,’ and I thought, What a great title for a dish. I’ve played about with it in my head for a