Usei na altura duas boas postas, uma de corvina e outra de garoupa. Por acaso, aquando da confecção, tinha no congelador um caldo de marisco preparado por mim, mas pode ser substituído por um caldo Knorr de peixe ou de marisco.
Segue-se a receita em inglês:
Never mind the bouillabaisse
Fish stew needn't cost a fortune, and if you pick sustainable varieties it can be guilt-free, too. Nigel Slater hooks an alternative to the Sunday roast
I have a way of starting off a fish stew that I thought I would pass on. I put a couple of timid splashes of ordinary olive oil in a fairly deep cast-iron pan, then drop in six anchovy fillets rinsed of their smelly oil and three chubby cloves of garlic, sliced as thin as paper. To that I add a whole bay leaf or sometimes two, a curl of orange peel and a couple of whole sprigs of thyme. I push the anchovies and garlic and woody herbs around in the warm oil with an old wooden spatula, then stand aside and give the anchovy time to dissolve to a sticky paste and the aromatics the chance to warm up. This is the point at which the base flavour of the soup is set - the backbone on which all the other stuff will hang. It gives the stew bigger balls than the usual mimsy kickoff with gently sweated onion or leek.
Once the anchovies have melted, I carry on with a glass of white wine or even dry sherry, let it bubble down a bit, then continue in a more typical fashion, tipping in a tin or two of Italian tomatoes, and any fresh ones knocking about the house and in need of a home. As they come slowly to a bubble I mash them down into a red pulp with the back of my spatula.
There are those who argue that we shouldn't be eating any fish at all. Then there are those who stick to the surprisingly large list of acceptable fish permitted by the Marine Conservation Society. This gives us a shopping list that includes the gurnard, pollack and rope-grown mussels I have in my bag, but not the eel that I picked up by mistake. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. (Actually I was, just not about the job in hand.) While not the cheapest fish supper you could sit down to, four vast bowls of steaming piscine gorgeousness will soon be on the table for less than the price of a decent roast. And this is Sunday lunch.
The sauce reduces to a thick, rust-coloured slurry that would be even more interesting if I had some saffron, but I don't. This is not the luxury version. It is now, when the sauce has reached the point that it begins to splutter and threaten to catch on the pan, that I lower in the fish with the firmest flesh (the illegal eel), followed five minutes later by the softer pieces, cut into chunks slightly too big for your spoon (they will shrink a little in the heat). I let things putter away gently till the fish is tender.
Last to go in are the mussels, which, in the three or four minutes it takes for their shells to open, will introduce more flavour than the rest of the fish put together. They will also bring with them more liquid, successfully turning the sauce into a thick soup-stew.
This is where I could leave things. But I want to make it go just that bit further than usual, so I make a rough paste of chillies and coriander to spread on to rounds of bread to float on top and then dunk down in the fishy depths with our spoons. Something that will gradually weave through the broth as we dip in, sending out little waves of heat and freshness throughout our supper.
A fish stew
Serves 4
3 large cloves of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
6 anchovy fillets
a 5cm curl of orange peel
2 bay leaves
3 sprigs of thyme
a glass of white wine or dry sherry
400 g can of tomatoes
400 g can of crushed tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes
500 ml fish or vegetable stock
approximately 400g of assorted fish per person (pollack, gurnard, etc)
24 mussels
For the toasts
8 thin slices of baguette
2 large, ripe chillies
a small bunch of coriander
4 spring onions
Peel and finely slice the garlic and cook in a deep pan with the oil, anchovies, orange peel, bay and thyme till the garlic is golden and the anchovy has dissolved. Pour in the wine, boil rapidly for a minute or two, then add the tomatoes and the stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 20 minutes. When the sauce is thick and slushy, lower in the fish, firmest first. Then, once the fish is opaque and tender, add the mussels. Cover with a lid and, when the mussels open, serve with the toasts tucked among the fish.
To prepare the toasts, toast the bread. Seed and very finely chop the chillies, the coriander and the spring onions, and mix together. Divide the mixture over the toasts.
