The promised fish soup recipe. The only specialist bit of equipment needed to make this is a Mouli for straining the soup. You can use a sieve but a Mouli makes it much less work and gets more of the flesh of the fish and hence more flavour into the soup. It is a very useful bit of equipment for all soups especially Gazpacho Andaluz and not expensive to furnish yourself with. I have found that the cheaper plastic ones, while not looking so smart hanging in the kitchen, actually work much better than the all metal.

For 8

The body and head of a skate, cut into 3 or 4 pieces

10 large prawns

4 cloves of garlic sliced

Half and onion sliced

Either 250 ml Passata – home made being best, or 250 ml Tomato Frito, or Standard sized tin of chopped plum tomatoes plus 3-4 tablespoons of tomato puree.

The cooking liquid from the skate wings from the previous post if you have done that.

Salt & Freshly ground black pepper

Peel the prawns and put the heads and skins in a pan with the cooking liquid from the skate wings if you have that, otherwise with enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and simmer for ten minutes.

Strain this stock and add to a large pan containing the pieces of skate body, the garlic, and the onion. Add more water to cover the ingredients and bring to the boil. Simmer for half an hour.

Let cool and strain through the coarse blade of the mouli making sure that you get as much of the fish flesh in the soup as you can. It will look a bit grey and unappetising at this point, but do not worry the tomatoes will transform it into a gorgeous red puree.

Return to the pan with whichever version of tomatoes that you are using and reheat. Cook for five minutes. Check seasoning. I have left this until this stage because some of the Passata and Tomato Frito in the shops has a high salt content so you can allow for this at this stage.

Add the chopped prawns to the soup and simmer a minute or two more. Serve with Rouille and Aliolli to stir in to taste.

I have given you already the recipe for Aloilli made like a mayonaise with eggs. This is  the simpler version using just garlic and olive oil. Put three cloves of garlic in the mortar with a good pinch of salt. Pound to a paste.

Have the olive oil at room temperature. Add a drizzle at a time, pounding well between the drizzles until you have a thick paste. For this condiment I added about 40 ml of oil as I wanted the garlic flavour to be strong, but for an eggless mayonaise keep adding the oil until you have a mayonaise consistency. You should be able to add about 150 ml of oil.

Rouille is a spicy condiment made with red chillis and seasonings, but you can easily substitute Harissa the Moroccan Chilli paste. I improvised mine by blending together some roasted red peppers from the freezer with fresh green chilli from the garden and a little olive oil and salt.