Italian Fish Cheek & Shellfish Soup

Name: Italian Fish Cheek & Shellfish Soup
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 12 green (raw) prawns, peeled and deveined; 1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped; 1 x 1-1.5 kg red emperor head, fins on, scaled and gilled; 6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped; 1 cup (250 ml) extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling; 1 cup (250 ml) tomato passata a few sprigs thyme; head from bar rock cod or snapper; salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper, to taste; 1 celery heart, leaves attached, roughly chopped; 18 vongole, purged; 1 large brown onion, roughly chopped; 18 blue mussels, scrubbed and debearded; 18 slices sourdough baguette; 1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves roughly chopped

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Sydney Seafood School Cookbook

By Roberta Muir

Published 2012

About

Popular all around the Mediterranean coast, hearty seafood soups make use of whatever fish and shellfish are readily, and usually cheaply, available. Nothing is wasted and fish heads, which contain plenty of meat, often end up in the soup pot. The bones add flavour and Stefano Manfredi says that the meat, especially from the cheeks, is a delicacy. Tomato passata is bottled Italian tomato sauce; if unavailable, use canned Italian tomatoes with their juice.