We discovered it while I was failing to earn any money as a photographer and found ourselves in a Rick Stein restaurant with friends and couldn’t afford quite a lot of the menu. This was one of the cheaper starters and it blew us away.
The orange sounds odd but we all use lemon with fish all the time so it’s not that different and you’ll be surprised how lovely it is.
This is a simplified version without pushing lobster shells through a sieve. You need to try the original but to be honest it is quite difficult as you’re essentially making a bisque from the seafood shells. For this version you just need a blender and it takes about 30 minutes from start to finish. You could also use frozen white fish which is a bit cheaper.
It comes in the original with a crouton covered in a rouille which is sort of halfway between a bread sauce and a mayonnaise. It is really worth making the rouille and croutons if you have time.
Directions
Sweat the onion, leek, celery and fennel in a little olive oil and sprinkled in salt. Cook them until they are soft but don’t brown them.
Then add the garlic and the parsley stalks and cook for a few minutes more until the garlic is sweet and soft.
Then add the orange zest, stir it around and add the stock and tomato puree, chilli powder (of tabasco) and the saffron.
Simmer it for 15 minutes or so.
I think it makes sense to blend it at this point and pass it through a sieve. You can forget the sieve bit but the fennel and celery can be a bit stringy so I think it’s worth it.
Rinse out the pan and put the liquid back in. Putting it through the sieve will make it a little bit thinner which is what you want, you’ll have to judge the what you want it to be like in terms of thickness but you can thin it down with a bit of water if you like. It’ll thicken up a but when you add the fish.
Bring it back up to simmering point and add the fish, orange juice and the rest of the parsley.
Simmer it for a few minutes until the fish is cooked – depends how big/thick the chunks are but certainly less than 10 minutes.
Take it off the heat and blend it again. You can put it through a sieve again but I wouldn’t bother personally – the fish doesn’t need it and the veg are already done.
Season with salt and add some pepper - I like white pre-ground pepper with fish but you could use black pepper or whatever you normally use.That’s it!
Top tip: Don’t boil the soup at any point, you just want to gently simmer it, it gives the flavours a bit more time to develop rather than it being smashed about and overly-reduced. It can also go cloudy if you boil stock or soup which just looks a bit rubbish.