Fish Soup

I enjoy spending a few hours cooking on the weekends. I often make enought food to get us through the bulk of the week. It often involves a drive to the Strip District to stock up on necessities like ground pork, fresh tofu, and Chinese mustard greens. Being an early riser, I used to go early, but our local NPR station changed the comedy news quiz What Do You Know in its Saturday rotation, moving it up to 11 AM, so unless I get a really early start, I miss it. (I was a contestant on this show about a year ago.) Last Saturday I went after lunch instead of early (bacon, egg, arugula sandwich on toasted whole wheat), and it was fine. Surprise: no store had run out of anything.

In fact, I was momentarily elated to see odd-looking eggs at one Asian market. They were decidedly not from a hen. I approached someone, asking gingerly, “Are those duck eggs?” Yes, I was told. $.99 each. Ever had a fried duck egg? It’s the most delicious thing on the planet. I eagerly grabbed a couple and approached the check out. “These have duck in them,” I was told. They’d been fertilized. I’d read somewhere that this was a delicacy in Vietnam, but one that I didn’t know how to, or care to, prepare. My dreams of fresh duck eggs will have to wait.

I did buy frozen duck legs from Lotus Foods for $4.10/#. Got 4 of them for $6 or $7. On Sunday I poached them, along with some pork belly, in some duck fat in a 285-degree oven for about 2 hours. Confit. A piece of the bacon went into a bean soup I had simmering simultaneously. The legs are now safely ensconced in the ‘fridge, tenderizing and gathering flavor while sealed under a layer of the duck fat that they poached in. Later I'll crisp them up in the oven and serve them with potatoes I'll fry in the duck fat. Or maybe some of the meat will find its way into a stir fry.

Lotus also sells fresh tofu for $.33 per piece (about 4 oz.). I usually buy two and stir fry it along with some ground pork ($1.69/#), ginger, shallot, green onion…. I pair this with sautéed Chinese mustard greens and some rice.

They also sell inexpensive whole fish, like croakers, for less than $3/#. It’s definitely cheaper than Wholey’s or Benkowitz. I bought frozen tilapia for less than $2/#. This made a classic southern French fish soup (soup au poisson) on Saturday night. Paired with a salad with goat cheese and walnuts, and followed by a little fruit salad and coconut butter cookies (yup, from Lotus), this and my two glasses of white Cotes du Rhone made a memorable supper.

Then: Battlestar Gallactica: Season 3. Bad Cylons! Lee really put on some weight. Also, I don’t like Starbuck with long hair.

Fish Soup au Poisson

Sauté a chopped carrot, onion and stalk of celery in olive oil until softened. Add some orange peel, chopped shallot, chopped garlic, S & P and basil. Sauté an additional minute. Add a couple of tablespoons of anise liqueur (I use Ricard Pastis- a fine aperitif on a warm day), stand back, and ignite. The alcohol will evaporate.

Add a small can of tomatoes and juice, some fish stock (I had made and frozen some from the cartilage of some skate I’d cooked recently) and a couple of scaled, gutted fish. Yup, the whole things. Inexpensive croakers work just as well as Black Sea Bass here. Conversely you could remove the fillets from the raw fish and add those (saving the skeletons for more stock).

Simmer gently, occasionally turning the fish, for 20 minutes, until the fish is cooked through.

Remove the fish, and remove the cooked meat from the fish and return this to the pan. Discard trimmings or use them to make a little quick fish stock.

Allow the soup to cool a bit, and then work the soup through a food mill to create a smooth fish broth. It’ll be rusty red.

Serve the soup with freshly toasted baguette croutons, some rouille (a garlicky homemade mayonnaise), and shredded gruyere cheese.

Rouille recipe

Blend together some roasted peeled red pepper with an egg yolk and a couple cloves of chopped garlic, some S & P, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper. Slowly incorporate some olive oil, until a mayonnaise-like consistency is reached.

Rub the croutons with raw garlic, smear them with the rouille, and put these in the base of your bowls. Ladle hot soup over them, and then sprinkle the whole thing with the cheese.