Sicilian Fish Soup
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, located on the Southernmost part of Italy. This place is noted for a long history of good cuisine and producing excellent wines hence it is called “God’s Kitchen”. Knowing that Sicily is an island ingredients used on most of their dishes comes from the surrounding coastlines hence seafood are abundant and these are commonly cooked with fresh fruits and vegetables.
While they are blessed with produce from the sea this regions popular dishes are its sweets and desserts like ice creams, pastries, cannoli, biscotti and granita to name some but we will not make those today instead we will be cooking a less popular dish called the Sicilian Fish Soup.
Sicilian Fish Soup is a seafood soup consisting of fresh fish and prawns cooked in tomatoes and wine, sometimes grated pumpkin is also used which gives the dish added sweetness and colour.
- 500 g white fleshy fish (snapper, monkfish, grouper), cubed
- 300 g prawns, peeled and deveined
- half butternut, peeled, seeded and grated
- 300 ml dry white wine
- 500 ml seafood stock
- 2 x 400 g cans chopped tomatoes
- juice from 1 lemon
- 1 red onion, finely chopped
- 2 sticks celery, finely chopped
- ½ small bulb fennel, finely chopped
- 1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- olive oil
- parsley, chopped
- salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- In a pot heat oil then sauté onion, celery, fennel, garlic and chilli, continue to cook until soft.
- Add the seafood stock, dry white wine and chopped tomatoes bring to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes in low heat.
- Add the grated butternut then simmer for 10 minutes.
- Add the fish and prawns then simmer for 10 more minutes.
- Add the lemon juice then season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- Garnish with chopped parsley.
Oh, yes, love this recipe!
This sounds delicious! Butternut squash must be wonderful with the prawns.
Living in NZ you’d have access to such wonderfully fresh seafood, Ray ! Singapore’s a bit harder, but I have my wet markets which usually have lovely fresh seafood, certainly fresher than my supermarket 🙂