Wednesday 20 November 2013

Salmon soup

Finally!! we get to cook salmon soup for you! It is the dish you have to taste if you visit Finland. In Catalonia we usually eat soups when it is cold and dark outside, but Finns do salmon soup whether is summer or winter!

This is serving for 6

Ingredients

  • 300g salmon
  • fresh dill
  • 2 potatoes
  • 3-4 carrots
  • 2 onions
  • 4dl cooking cream
  • Salmon broth
  • Salt
  • Black pepper 

Salmon broth

  • Head, bones and trims from a salmon
  • Half onion
  • Half tomato
  • 1 garlic
  • laurel
  • vegetables for broth (carrot, turnip, celery, etc)
  • water

The salmon broth is not mandatory, but it is much better. If you go to buy salmon, either to a supermarket or a small fish shop, they will ask you if you want the head and bones, say YES!!! for the soup it gives so much more flavour! of course you can always use the stock cubes.
 

Preparation

 

Salmon broth

I do what in Catalan cooking call sofregit, this is the base of all catalan cooking and I believe gives much more intense flavor to everything you cook with it. It is really simple to do a sofregit, in a pan or in our casserole (we are going to use always the same) add like a tbsp of olive oil, half onion, a nail or two of garlic and saute it for 5 min, grate half a tomato and fry it together 5 more minutes. And that´s it! this is a sofregit!
Next step is add the vegetables for the broth with the laurel, give a quick mix everything together, cook 5 min and add the water. How much water? Enough as to cover everything plus 3 fingers more.

Keep in mind that I haven´t added any salt, no, I haven´t forgotten! quick chemistry class!
In a broth we want all the flavors to dissolve into the water as to create the broth. All the aromas are dissolved withing the water or oil of each ingredient, if we add salty water we are limiting the amount of flavor the water can gather from the ingredients. Surely there is someone who can give a better explanation, but this chemical aprox and the wisdom of past generations says not to put salt to broth till the end.
Let the broth to boil for an hour at least, then pour it through a stainer into a bowl, just to avoid the bones to go into the broth.




Salmon soup

We have a nice salmon broth, so add the potatoes, carrots and onions peeled and chopped.
From the remaining of the head and bones, try to rescue as much meat as possible and cut small pieces of 300 gr of salmon.
After the vegetables have been boiling for 15 min add the salmon, salt and black pepper, cook it for 10 more minutes.
Add the 4dl of cooking cream and the dill finely chopped, let it cook for 5 min and it is ready to serve!

Hyvää ruokahalua!
Mr South

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