Seafood, eat

So, I invited friends for Sunday lunch and then had a total panic about it which involved only getting 2 hours sleep on Saturday night. I was forced to abandon the fantastic idea of a big convivial paella after realising (at 2am) that I didn’t have a pan big enough to make it in, but I had a bag of mixed seafood to use up urgently and was determined to think of something similar. Rick Stein’s Spain came up trumps (at 5am) with several soupy rice and fish recipes which I adapted until I ended up with the below (at 1pm).  It is definitely Spanish-y but is also a bit like a bouillabaisse in that it doesn’t have any rice in it and it’s the colour of rust.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I served it with big croutons, aioli (mayonnaise, lemon, salt, lots and lots of garlic, a bit of turmeric to make it yellow…) and a token salad.

There are no pictures because I forgot before lunch and then after lunch I was drunk.

Seafood Stew (serves 4-6)

You will need.
-Butter/oil
-2 onions
-1 carrot
-1 stick of celery
- 2 cans of chopped tomatoes
- 2tbsp of tomoto puree
-White wine
-2 anchovies
-750ml fish or chicken stock (see below for difference)
-150ml double cream
-6 coley fillets (SUSTAINABLE FISHING)
-approx 400g of mixed seafood of your choice. I went with a handy 400g bag of frozen mixed seafood from Waitrose (funny that) which was prawns, squid and mussels.
-Big handful of chopped parsley
-2 lemons
-Pinch Cayenne/smoked paprika/pimento (I know they’re different, but basically whatever you can get your hands on that gives it a bit of a kick).
-Salt and pepper

Method.
-Put the onions, carrot and celery (the mirepoix, if you’re being a dick) in a big pot with butter and oil (good things happen to burning temperatures when you use both), season and sweat them down until soft. Should be about 10 minutes.

-Add the tins of tomatoes, 2 tablespoons of tomato puree and a good slug of wine (a large glass or about a quarter of the bottle).

-Finely chop the two anchovies and drop them in. You won’t taste them as anchovies (so put them in even if you know someone who hates them; just keep quiet about it) – they’ll dissolve and leave behind a good depth of flavour for everything else.

-Wait for this to reduce to about half and then add the stock, cream, and check seasoning.

A note about stock.I had a friend coming who was not a particular fan of shellfish (I know, how great am I, cooking his favourite thing for him?) so I was conscious of not making the whole event too fishy. I therefore used chicken stock. I think it lent a nice meaty background to the finished soup, and it definitely made the bits of seafood themselves quite distinct, but you should traditionally (and for a more homogenous whole) use fish stock.

-Whichever stock you use, make sure everything reduces by about half again. Taste it now. If you’re doing it right it should taste pretty much exactly the same as Heinz Tomato Soup. I know, you’ve spent half an hour on this and you could have opened a can. To jazz it up, now put in the spice. I used a good few shakes of cayenne, until there was a definite bite, but obviously do it to your taste.

(at this point, you can leave the base to go cold overnight or during the day, and just reheat to finish off when your guests arrive. I had to do this because all of my friends were late).

-Cut the coley into small chunks and drop into the soup. They should only take a couple of minutes to cook. I was worried about the lack of flavour in coley (sorry, I know you’re not allowed to say that but it is basically the cod’s poor relation. Albeit his relation who isn’t about to become extinct) so I actually wrapped the fillets in some foil with a bit of butter and roasted them in the oven for 10 minutes. This is anal and you don’t need to do it.

-Throw the seafood in – it only needs warming through so keep an eye on it to watch out for overcooking (especially from the squid rings, which are cagey little brutes and prone to spontaneous rubberization).

-Add a squeeze of lemon and all the parsley, give it a final stir and serve with lots of wine.

(Apologies for the pun in the title)