Our next soup will be a seafood soup, with each of us finding a recipe we'd like to try. I've invited my brother Nathaniel - the beer cheese soup proponent - to join in. We can make each others seafood soup recipes at some point, but I'm mostly curious to see what we are individually drawn to in this broad category.
CASSIE'S PICK
Hot and Sour Tomato Broth with Shrimp from Padma Lakshmi's Tangy, Tart, Hot, & Sweet
This soup is inspired by the South Indian soup rasam, which I really enjoy. It is certainly not a meal on its own, but shrimp would certainly make it more filling. Lakshmi warns that the addition makes this very different from the "original" it is based on, but that the flavors still work quite well together. She also suggests adding rice noodles to make it even more substantial (and, of course, even less traditional).
Ingredients:
2 1-ounce knobs tamarind pulp
12 ounces peeled, deveined shrimp
juice of 1 ripe lemon
salt
1 ½ T vegetable oil
¾ t black mustard seeds
¼ t fenugreek seeds
½ t cumin seeds
20 fresh curry leaves
3 cloves sliced garlic
½ t asafetida powder
2 C halved grape or cherry tomatoes
1 to 2 fresh minced green chilies
½ t sambar curry powder (or Madras curry powder)
½-inch piece of jaggery (brown cane sugar or palm sugar)
1 T Thai fish sauce
¼ c chopped fresh cilantro
Directions:
1. Soak the tamarind pulp in 6 cups of very hot water (bring it to a boil and then pour it over the tamarind) for 20 minutes and crush it with the back of a spoon to make a pulp.
2. Marinate the shrimp in lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Set aside in the fridge.
3. In a deep soup pot, heat the vegetable oil on medium heat and add the mustard seeds, fenugreek, cumin, curry leaves, and garlic; cook for 3-4 minutes. As soon as the mustard seeds begin to pop and crackle out of the pan, add the asafetida, tomatoes, and green chilies. Stir for a couple of minutes and then add the curry powder.
4. After 4-5 minutes, after tomatoes start to soften, pour in the strained tamarind gravy.
5. Stir in the jaggery and the fish sauce, and heat for about 10 minutes. Make sure the jaggery dissolves completely. Taste for salt. Once the oil begins to separate, and pools of it form on the surface, add the shrimp and cook until just opaque. This is where you could add in rice noodles, too.
6. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro.
My Version
This was so good! And I know why: it is simply a seafood variation on our favorite genre of "spicy noodle soup." I was rather impressed with my spice supply, as the only things I had to buy for this were shrimp, cilantro, and fresh tomatoes. I somehow had all those other items on hand, although this did deplete my tamarind supply, and I am nearly out of curry leaves (20 is a lot, but don't scrimp; they really make this dish special).
I really didn't change much. I had tamarind syrup instead of pulp, which is easier to use (basically a concentrate, and it doesn't need to be strained). I added a bit more shrimp because I bought a full pound. And I did opt for adding the rice noodles, which made the dish into a meal. I just soaked them in hot water while I got everything else ready, and added them in, already cooked, with the shrimp.
This soup is so bright and fresh, and is an excellent way to transition to the lighter flavors of spring. It was also fairly quick to put together, as nothing has to cook for very long. I recommend assembling your spices and chopping all the vegetables first, to streamline the process.
Highly recommended!
I wanted to make a soup that would feel like spring (light and herb-filled) and would use frozen seafood, since in New Mexico we get our seafood from the freezer section. If it's not frozen one wonders how long it's been away from the sea! Cassandra forwarded a few recipes to me and luckily one used sea scallops (a bag of which I had stashed in the freezer).
Spinach and Scallop Soup, from Bon Appetit, September 1997
makes 2 main course servings
2 T. butter
1/2 c. diced red bell pepper
1/2 c. chopped onion
2 c. canned low-salt chicken broth
1-1/2 c. (packed) thinly sliced spinach leaves
1/4 c. whipping cream
1/2 t. dried crushed red papper
10 sea scallops, halved horizontally
2 T. chopped fresh basil
Melt butter in heavy med. saucepan over med. heat. Add bell pepper and onion and saute until almost tender, about 3 min. Add broth, spinach, cream and red papper. Cover pan and simmer until spinach is tender, about 3 min. Add scallops and simmer uncovered until just opaque in center, about 3 min. Mix in basil. Season soup to taste with salt and papper. Ladle into bowls and serve.
My Version
Very quick and easy recipe. I tripled the recipe since who would ever make soup to serve 2? One of the reasons for making soup in my opinion is to have containers in the freezer for days when you're just too tired to cook. I used 1-1/2 large yellow and orange bell peppers instead of the red. It's what I had on hand, but I think the colors also looked great. So great, in fact, that I continued the festive theme and used an entire medium-sized purple onion. Beautiful! I had lovely baby spinach so figured there was no reason to slice such little leaves (much work saved!). I used med. hot Aleppo red pepper, one of my favorites and I didn't want to risk making this gentle-seeming soup too spicy. The sea scallops varied a lot in thickness so I just tried to slice them between 3/8" and 1/2" thick. This meant some were sliced once and others made two or three slices, but I wanted them all to cook at the same rate. Even though I love fresh basil it just didn't seem to belong in this soup, so I picked parsley, lemon thyme, marjoram and chives from my herb garden and chopped them all up very finely with the ulu knife Gordon had brought me from Alaska (a wonderful contraption with its own shallow cutting bowl that I recommend to anyone who uses fresh herbs often). Everything was done within a half hour, even with the longer times tripling the recipe required. I added the herbs along with the broth and spinach rather than at the end since the slightly tougher leaves of the ones I used instead of basil needed a little extra cooking time. The scallops went in last and were cooked in just a few minutes. I suggest you stay with the soup once you add them so you can get it off the heat quickly enough to keep them from getting tough.
I had the soup with a glass of ice water with fresh mint and some terrific small snack samosas Cassie had sent me. Wonderful lunch!
My Version
This was so good! And I know why: it is simply a seafood variation on our favorite genre of "spicy noodle soup." I was rather impressed with my spice supply, as the only things I had to buy for this were shrimp, cilantro, and fresh tomatoes. I somehow had all those other items on hand, although this did deplete my tamarind supply, and I am nearly out of curry leaves (20 is a lot, but don't scrimp; they really make this dish special).
I really didn't change much. I had tamarind syrup instead of pulp, which is easier to use (basically a concentrate, and it doesn't need to be strained). I added a bit more shrimp because I bought a full pound. And I did opt for adding the rice noodles, which made the dish into a meal. I just soaked them in hot water while I got everything else ready, and added them in, already cooked, with the shrimp.
This soup is so bright and fresh, and is an excellent way to transition to the lighter flavors of spring. It was also fairly quick to put together, as nothing has to cook for very long. I recommend assembling your spices and chopping all the vegetables first, to streamline the process.
Highly recommended!
ALEX'S PICK (in place of Nathaniel, though he happily ate the results!)
It's finally my (Cassie's) turn to meet baby Josephine. I'm in Colorado right now for my Passover/Easter/"spring" break and having a wonderful time. (Josephine, by the way, is the sweetest baby there ever was.) Last night, Alex made us a delicious bouillabaisse, and she passed the recipe on to me - though it came to her first from my mom. She says she used different seafood (clams, mussels, and steelhead trout), increased the number of carrots, used canned tomatoes instead of fresh, and omitted the lemon juice. She also used the full cup (!) of olive oil but was not satisfied with the results, thinking it needed less oil and more broth. In the past she has used a large can of undrained crushed tomatoes, which she said worked better to thin out the oil.
This was really delicious, though quite rich! One small bowl was enough for each of us. We ate it with roasted Brussels sprouts on the side, in front of the TV, with the baby bouncing at our feet. Vacation is great!
1904: Bouillabaisse, from The New York Times
1 cup olive oil
2 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded and sliced
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 carrot, peeled and very thinly sliced
2 pinches saffron
1 bay leaf
4 sprigs parsley
2 cloves garlic
1 pound each boned and skinned cod and halibut (fluke or sea bass may be substituted for either), cut into 2-inch pieces
2 cups peeled and deveined medium shrimp
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup rich fish broth
1/2 cup white wine
6 slices toasted country bread.
1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the tomatoes, onion, carrot, saffron, bay leaf and parsley. Peel and crush 1 garlic clove and add it to the pan. Add the fish, shrimp and lemon juice, season with salt and pepper and boil for 10 minutes. Add the fish broth and wine, bring to a rapid simmer and cook until the fish is just cooked through.
Adjust the seasoning, adding more saffron, lemon juice, salt and pepper as desired.
2. Rub the toasts with the remaining peeled garlic clove. Set a toast in the bottom of each of 6 bowls and ladle the soup on top. Serves 6.
ANN'S PICK
I wanted to make a soup that would feel like spring (light and herb-filled) and would use frozen seafood, since in New Mexico we get our seafood from the freezer section. If it's not frozen one wonders how long it's been away from the sea! Cassandra forwarded a few recipes to me and luckily one used sea scallops (a bag of which I had stashed in the freezer).
Spinach and Scallop Soup, from Bon Appetit, September 1997
makes 2 main course servings
2 T. butter
1/2 c. diced red bell pepper
1/2 c. chopped onion
2 c. canned low-salt chicken broth
1-1/2 c. (packed) thinly sliced spinach leaves
1/4 c. whipping cream
1/2 t. dried crushed red papper
10 sea scallops, halved horizontally
2 T. chopped fresh basil
Melt butter in heavy med. saucepan over med. heat. Add bell pepper and onion and saute until almost tender, about 3 min. Add broth, spinach, cream and red papper. Cover pan and simmer until spinach is tender, about 3 min. Add scallops and simmer uncovered until just opaque in center, about 3 min. Mix in basil. Season soup to taste with salt and papper. Ladle into bowls and serve.
My Version
Very quick and easy recipe. I tripled the recipe since who would ever make soup to serve 2? One of the reasons for making soup in my opinion is to have containers in the freezer for days when you're just too tired to cook. I used 1-1/2 large yellow and orange bell peppers instead of the red. It's what I had on hand, but I think the colors also looked great. So great, in fact, that I continued the festive theme and used an entire medium-sized purple onion. Beautiful! I had lovely baby spinach so figured there was no reason to slice such little leaves (much work saved!). I used med. hot Aleppo red pepper, one of my favorites and I didn't want to risk making this gentle-seeming soup too spicy. The sea scallops varied a lot in thickness so I just tried to slice them between 3/8" and 1/2" thick. This meant some were sliced once and others made two or three slices, but I wanted them all to cook at the same rate. Even though I love fresh basil it just didn't seem to belong in this soup, so I picked parsley, lemon thyme, marjoram and chives from my herb garden and chopped them all up very finely with the ulu knife Gordon had brought me from Alaska (a wonderful contraption with its own shallow cutting bowl that I recommend to anyone who uses fresh herbs often). Everything was done within a half hour, even with the longer times tripling the recipe required. I added the herbs along with the broth and spinach rather than at the end since the slightly tougher leaves of the ones I used instead of basil needed a little extra cooking time. The scallops went in last and were cooked in just a few minutes. I suggest you stay with the soup once you add them so you can get it off the heat quickly enough to keep them from getting tough.
I had the soup with a glass of ice water with fresh mint and some terrific small snack samosas Cassie had sent me. Wonderful lunch!
