For the last few days, I've been thinking about soup. It's starting to get chilly here at night, and not all that warm (by my Virginia standards) during the day, and that means soup. But I got burned out on all my standby soups--carrot coriander, vegetable, potato leek--and besides, it's best to keep those in reserve for wintertime comfort food. Of course, this soup will be brilliant later in the season, as well.
This recipe comes from Sophie, and her version was even better--I believe she made it with both monkfish and salmon from the fish shop in the market in Ennis. I had frozen cod on hand, so used that--but it was by far outdone by the sheer wondrousness of the soup itself.
So, without further ado, "Sweet Potato Soup with Fish." This is verbatim from what Sophie wrote down for me a couple of years ago:
Ingredients:
1 medium-sized onion
250 g sweet potato
200 g carrots
1 liter of fish stock (vegetable stock can be substituted)
salt
freshly ground pepper
2 teaspoons of curry powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 deciliter coconut milk
juice of 1 lime
fresh coriander
salmon and/or cod and/or monkfish, etc.
(and just for info: prawns)
* Peel the onion and chop it. Peel and chop the carrots and sweet potatoes. Put into soup pan and pour fish stock onto them. Add salt, pepper, curry powder, and cinnamon.
* Bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes till vegetables are cooked.
* Blitz with whooshie. Add coconut milk and lime juice.
* Add fish and cook for about 7 minutes (if using prawns they only take 1 minute)
* Garnish with fresh coriander
...I did a few things differently, as per usual. I sauteed the onion and then added the spices at the end of the sauteeing. I used vegetable stock, and since it was plenty salty, didn't add any extra salt. And rather than measuring grams, I just fecked in 2 sweet potatoes and about a cup of carrots--it was soup, after all, not baking. I used a little more than a deciliter of coconut milk, since it comes in 150ml cans, and what, I ask you, am I going to do with 50ml of coconut milk? And I only used half a lime, because it was a juicy one, and I thought it tasted divine with just half. No prawns, since anaphylactic shock was not part of my plan for the evening.
Aside from some tough bits on the cod, it was gorgeous!
The Book I'm Not Reading: however shall I choose? The book I'd most like to be reading but don't have time for at the moment is Sara Ahmed's new one, The Promise of Happiness. Trust me, if you don't already know Ahmed's work, it's not what it sounds like.
3 comments:
I completely agree that one of the joys of soup is that you can chuck in (sorry, feck in, of course) more or less of certain ingredients when you feel like it or as availability dictates. Amounts listed are simply to have a vague idea of the proportions and to be able to make a shopping list.
Looks entirely gustable! What a lovely recipe! Thanks so much for posting this. I love that you share your love of cooking and food.
Yes--soup is so forgiving that way! Though I did try to keep to more or less the same amounts as what you wrote down, Sophie, so that the amount of spices would be appropriate. Figured it'd be easier to just do what you did than to have to guess at the quantities of curry and cinnamon.
Orion: I'm trying to get *back* my love of cooking to some extent here--I had kind of lost it during the worst of the dissertation crunch. Glad you're enjoying the blog!
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