Seafood soup

I tried, this weekend, to replicate the fish soup we had at River Cottage HQ last weekend.  I'm not sure how close I got but it was extremely delicious, and was a definite nod in the direction of the magnificent soup we had there.

I couldn't lay my hands on any fish heads and didn't really want to go buying lobsters just so I could use their shells for a seafood bisque, so I bought some fish pie mix at the Chatsworth fish counter and a bag of Sainsbury's basic shrimps and put those in the stock pot with a sliced onion, a chopped fennel bulb, some roughly chopped garlic cloves, two glasses of dry white wine and some water.  I simmered that for a couple of hours until the fennel and onions were very soft and then strained the broth.

I then added a can of tomato juice and some fennel seeds and simmered that for half an hour or so.  Then I left the broth to sit and develop for about 24 hours.

When it was time to have the soup I heated the broth and then added the scallops and prawns that we bought in Lyme Regis last weekend (and which I had frozen when we got home, obviously!) and some chopped squid and mussels that I bought locally. I also added some chopped dill and, at the end, a slosh of single cream that I happened to have handy.

I ended up with a huge bowl of seafood soup which should have been more than plenty for an entrée for Sunday lunch.  There is very little of it left! Just enough for me to turn it into a fish stew for tonight, using some of the ling and salmon that we also bought in Lyme Regis last weekend.