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Fish grilled, fish baked, fish fried… my husband is complaining already. So I said I’d bring meat back to the table. Then I saw frozen pink tuna on sale at the supermarket. The only frozen fish worth buying here are salmon and Nile perch, but I looked at the package and imagined rich, aromatic fish soup with red peppers and cilantro and chunks of vegetables – and a little spill of olive oil in each bowl…oh dear.
Well, I guess I can fry him a couple of hamburgers.
Mimi’s Fish Soup
serves 4
Ingredients:
2 Tblsp. olive oil, and more at serving time
About 1 kg. deboned fish. Use any combination of large, firm pieces and smaller, more delicate fish. For this soup I used 600 grams of pink tuna and 500 grams frozen red mullet fillets.
1 medium onion
3 large cloves garlic
1 large tomato (I had a handful of cherry tomatoes and no other plans for them, so I halved them and chucked them in.)
2 stalks celery
1 large carrot
1 young leek
optional: one other vegetable. Squash, fresh mushrooms, or green beans are good: about 1 cup of any.
1/2 red bell pepper
1 pinch saffron
1 pinch dried or 1 sprig fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper, or 4 turns of the pepper grinder
1 large handful chopped parsley or cilantro
Hint: kids like this soup blended, with some whole corn kernels in it.
Method:
1. Peel and chop all the vegetables into chunks. Reserve the bell pepper chunks.
2. Sauté the vegetables, except for the bell pepper, in the olive oil. While you’re stirring, add the thyme, bay leaves, salt, and pepper.
3. Cover the pan and let the vegetables steam for 10 minutes.
4. Add water to cover, and bring to a low boil.
5. Add the saffron. Simmer the vegetable stock for another 15 minutes.
6. Add the fish. If using two or more kinds of fish, add the firmer pieces now. Maintain a low boil and cook the soup 15 minutes longer.
7. Add any smaller or more delicate pieces of fish. Add the chopped red pepper. The reason for adding it at this point is that it will maintain its bright color and make the soup attractive. Lower the flame and cook the soup a further 10 minutes.
8. Add the chopped parsley or cilantro, stir well, and turn the flame off.
Add a little splash of olive oil to each bowl. Serve with plenty of hot garlic bread.
Your photo is spectacular. Yum.
I see there’s no dairy in this; yay, that means I can try it!
I printed your quinoa-oatmeal bread recipe, and I bought some quinoa. It inspired me to add oatmeal to some dough I had already made; that bread got gobbled up. I will aim to try the recipe next week.
What a beautiful blog. Your photos are great. But, I need to lose weight and looking at your pictures makes me hungry. I love bread, and your photos of breads are just great. I hope I can visit you again some time.
Leora, thanks.
Your comment about dairy makes me realize that I should post milk-free recipes more often.
Yes, and oats seem to melt into bread, giving a sweeter/nutty taste and soft crumb. I wasn’t going to put oats into this week’s challah, but now I think I will.
I’ve gone a little quinoa-mad recently, been putting it into everything but refraining from posting more lest readers suspect that I’m subsidized by quinoa farmers…hope your bread turns out wonderful, next week.
Shabbat shalom!
Fred, I had to chuckle over your comment: I also love bread and have to restrict myself. It’s a mark of success for me if my photos make a reader hungry!
Try the fish soup, just don’t add the final dollop of olive oil. And thank you for the compliment.
[...] Mimi cooks a fish soup [...]
I finally made this fish soup. It was DEE-licious. We basically ate it for supper.
Of course, in my Leora-like way, I substituted, because I didn’t have all the ingredients. I have no saffron (I don’t even see it for sale here), so I used turmeric. I didn’t have a leek, so I used some leftover cabbage and some collard greens at the end. Tomatoes in winter here are like plastic, so I used some canned tomatoes. And I didn’t have a bell pepper, but the canned tomatoes and turmeric gave it plenty of color.
I grow thyme on the edge of my sidewalk, so fresh thyme was just a matter of going out the front door and grabbing a bunch.
Your Leora-like way is the best way to go. All your substitutes make sense to combine with fish, and I’ll bet your soup was great. I’m really glad you and your family enjoyed.
Lucky you…I could never get thyme to grow for me.
[...] Israeli Potato Salad Ilana-Davita: Eggplant Salad Ilana-Davita: Carrot Salad Mimi: Fish Soup (this recipe for fish soup with vegetables is undescribably yummy) Mimi: Almond-Lemon Macaroons [...]
Ok, in about an hour I want to start on this fish soup. Here is what I got: a pound of cod, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, parsley, bay leaf, fresh thyme, salt, black pepper, eight cherry tomatoes, one fourth of a big old dark green bell pepper, and any number of small red ripe jalapenos. No saffron. But once one of my no good ex husbands stole some for me. I think he traded it for some weed though.
Anyway, what about this pepper, Mimi? Do I need to leave out the green bell entirely and just put a shredded jalapeno in there the last ten minutes? Jalapenos are about as big as the last joint of my thumb.
I hope you get to answer this in the next 45 minutes, but if not, I will still be glad to get your slant on this cause it will make it better the next time.
Oh! My starter was doing heavenly based on your instructions. But what I did with it was a disaster. Best not dwell on it.
But I started a new one today!
Thanks ~
Gally
Hi, Lorna,
I guess you’ll have started your fish soup by now. It’s fine to leave out the green pepper – or to put it in. The nice thing about this soup is that it has flexible margins. No saffron – OK! The thyme will do, and the cherry tomatoes will mellow both flavor and color. Jalapenos? Sounds good to me. Let me know how it turned out… and when you bake with your new starter, too.
The soup turned out wonderful. What I ended up doing is mincing up both some of the green bell and some of the red jalapeno ~ I deveined and seeded the little hot bastards first ~ and putting them in where the red bell would have gone in. It made it just a little bit hot, well, warm, rather muy poco picante like. And I cooked a bit of corn cause I was going to try putting some in the blender but ended up just putting the corn into the regular soup.
Man, it was perfect, Mimi. Your directions are so clear and easy. I was able to do it in these clear increments using the timer.
It was done when Ernest and Ralph got back with a load of wood and they loved it. I had to make the garlic bread out of Walmart hotdog buns but still, nice surprise for them, they were very happy. Did some tapioca pudding and some ice tea. I got down some country music right fast on Itunes ~ Steve Earl! One of them kind of days. I guess cause it is so weird here. A rattlesnake was right outside the back door last week and Ernest had to shoot it when he got home from Walmart, which I hated. That is, that it had to be shot. Then this morning on my walk I run across a rattler stretched out in the road. I made a sound like Curly of the Three Stooges and took off running! No need to shoot that one. On a later walk, he was gone.
Thanks for the great recipe, Mimi! The starter is bubbling away. I am going to look over your site real good before I mess with it.
Gally
Hi, Gally,
It really makes me happy when folks tell me that one of my recipes made *them* happy. So thanks for letting me know! And in fact I think I’ll add a little heat to the soup next time, too, in the shape a tiny chili pepper. Your dinner and background music sound great, although I agree that having to shoot a rattlesnake must be disturbing. You must be having warm weather: snakes like to sun themselves.
[...] Mimi: Fish Soup for Winter Dinners [...]
I have used your recipe tonight and the soup smells delicious! I am sure that this is a winner.
Michaela, it is a great soup. You can hardly go wrong with those ingredients! Thanks for letting me know.