Anyway, back to the soup, it is a really basic, almost humble, fish soup - the kind soup that fishermen would cook in Spanish fishing villages, with a really wholesome taste. You can make it with any white fish. We did it with monkfish, that works particularly well. But you can also try with hake, haddock or cod. My children love it.
You need:
- 2 large potatoes.
- 300 gr white fish (either monkfish or cod, hake, haddock…)
- 2 white fish bones (just ask the fishmonger for these - they will normally give them to you for free)
- a bay leaf
- an onion
- 300 gr prawns (this is optional but it gives a nice variety of textures to the soup)
- 1 egg (room temperature)
- 180 ml olive oil
- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
- salt
- 1.5 l water
Boil the potatoes (peeled and cut in half), onion (cut in half), fish bones and bay leaf in the 1.5 l of water with salt for around 25 minutes. Seven or eight minutes before you are going to take this fish stock off the heat add the white fish. And after a couple of minutes add the prawns. As soon as the fish and prawns are cooked (it really is a matter of a few minutes only) take the stock off the heat. Take the potatoes, white fish and prawns out and reserve them (after cutting them in mouth bite chunks). Discard the onion and bay leaf, get rid of any foam at the top of the stock and pass it all through a sieve.
White the stock is boiling, make a mayonnaise with the egg and the olive oil. The easiest is to make this with a hand blender following our recipe for two minutes mayonnaise (i.e put the egg and olive oil in a tall beaker, put the hand blender into the beaker and blend for a minute without moving it at all, then move it up slowly). As soon as the mayo is ready add the lemon juice and a bit of salt.
Let the fish stock cool down a little. Then take half a glass of the fish stock and pour it over the mayo (in the beaker), mix it well with a balloon whisk. The pour this mixture over the fish stock and mix well again. You can use as much or as little mayo as you wish - the more mayo, the ticker the soup. If you like a thiner soup (as we do) use only half of the mayo.
When you are going to serve the soup put some potato and fish chunks as well as a couple of prawns on each plate. Then pour the liquid on top.
This soup is best warm but not hot. The only rule to remember is that once you mix the mayo with the fish stock you should never-ever boil the soup. If you boil it, the mayo will split and you will end up with scrambled soup - not good!
