Seafood Soup or Italian Zuppa di Pesce
After the delicious seafood paella recipe, I got the energy to cook something else from the same category. This seafood soup exceeded all my expectations. It's on the treats list - very special, whole, beautiful, tasty and interesting.
Finding, cleaning and preparing the seafood takes a little effort, but it's worth every minute invested in cooking this recipe. I also recommend it if you want to try something new and incredibly good. I advise you to pick your favourite seafood. Besides shrimps and mussels, which are the only ones required, you can use anything else you find and like. I used baby octopus and squid rings and Gilthead brim (dorade) for the fish.
It must be served with toasted baguette slices, keep this in mind when you buy the ingredients.
Fillet the fish, you can watch some short videos on Youtube if you don't know how to do it.
Clean the shrimp, you can find instructions on the internet.
Place the fish carcasses and the shrimp shells in a pot.
Pour enough water to cover them, add in the carrot, onion, celery root, parsley root and some black peppercorns.
Place over heat and when it comes to the boil, bring the heat down and simmer slowly for 2 hours.
Clean the mussels or the clams, you can find instructions on how to clean fresh mussels on my website.
Heat 30 ml olive oil in a frying pan, fry 3 cloves of chopped garlic and add the mussels in. Stir well, put the lid on and cook for 3-4 minutes, shaking the pan frequently. When most of the mussels have opened, turn heat off.
Place the mussels in a colander and collect the liquid in a bowl or a pot, we will use it later.
Clean the octopus, find instructions on Youtube. Bring to the boil in plenty of water and simmer until it's very soft. Test it - if you can insert the knife easily, then it's done.
Remove from the water, cool and cut into small pieces.
We still have to take the mussels out of their shells, discard the ones which haven't opened.
Save 10 mussels with a shell, for a beautiful appearance.
After 2 hours of boiling, drain the fish carcasses and shrimp shells soup.
Together with the liquid from the mussels, it will be the base for the final soup.
Now clean, wash and slice the squid rings. I prefer them shorter.
In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat 30-50 ml olive oil and fry 3 cloves of chopped garlic. Cook only to release its flavour.
Add the sliced squid in, mix well and cook for 5 minutes.
Pour in a little white wine and cook for another 2-3 minutes.
Add the crushed tomatoes and the liquid from the mussels, stir well and slowly simmer for 25 minutes.
Pour in about 800 ml liquid from the fish and shrimp soup we just cooked and drained. You can adjust the quantity of liquid, whether you want a denser or a thinner soup. Season with salt.
Add the fish fillets, cut into medium pieces.
Stir slowly and carefully, cook for 5 minutes.
Add in the cleaned fresh shrimps.
Then the mussels and the octopus.
From now on, do not stir the pot with a spoon anymore, just grip the handles and shake the pot gently. Otherwise, the fish might break up and the soup won't have the right consistency.
At the end, add the chopped parsley and a little ground black pepper, shake the pot gently (do not stir with the spoon!) and turn heat off.
Allow the flavours to blend for 15 minutes.
Serve the soup with toast and with great pleasure ...
Enjoy!
