We decided that given the freezing temperatures around the New Year, it would be quite inappropriate to only offer cold food. A fish soup seemed to combine flavour and a relatively quick preparation time. Since some of the ingredients were bought by my sister in law at the fishmonger I may have a few details of the fish wrong. Anyway the following should give a good indication of what we did.
Serves 20
Ingredients
800 g fish (we used roughly 200 g each of cod, salmon, haddock and one with a similar size fillet to haddock but with pink flesh; but I do not see why any reasonable selection of white and oily fish could not work)
200 g prawns
1 fennel bulb
2 chillies (large supermarket ones)
4 pieces lemon grass
4 cloves garlic
3 cm piece ginger
2 limes
3 fish stock cubes
3.5 litres water
8 large spring onions
handful coriander leaves
salt & pepper
1 tbsp vegetable oil
Method
1. Finely chop the chillies, garlic and ginger
2. Scrape zest from limes and squeeze out the juice
3. Finely vertically slice the fennel retaining any leaves separately
4. Chop spring onions into thin slices including undamaged leaves; separate white slices from green leaves
5. Gently fry the lemon grass and ginger in oil for 15 minutes (this is to soften lemon grass)
5. Meanwhile chop the fish into bite-size pieces
6. Add white parts of spring onions, fennel, garlic and chillies and fry slowly for 5 minutes
7. Meanwhile chop the coriander roughly
8. Meanwhile make 3.5 litres of fish stock from the water and stock cubes and add to the vegetables
9. Add salt, pepper, lime juice and zest
10. Add fish and prawns and simmer for 3 minutes
11. Add chopped coriander, spring onion leaves and any fennel leaves then serve
