Fish soup

Braved the rain yesterday to take a walk into Epsom. The main point of which was to buy a cooker oven light from Robert Dyas. Which I managed.

I also passed a M&S trolley at the Epsom end of Hook Road, but decided against. I was already headed home and there was the matter of the fish soup which needed attending to.

But much nearer home, I did come across some nearly-new bricks in a skip, and abstracted one. One which was a little battered, but which was clean, despite appearances in the snap above, which appearances must be some trick of the light. It seemed a bit conspicuous to go back for more, to make a special trip, but I may get another if I happen to pass the skip again.

Next step was the fish soup, to which end I had bought some haddock from Waitrose, some white, some yellow, the day before. With the white describing itself as formerly frozen, which I think meant that it had been frozen soon after being caught, but then allowed to thaw out for display - not quite the same as fresh. I was told that the point of telling me was that I should not think to freeze it again. Haddock which I might say cost a little more per kilo than the fore rib of beef available from the next counter. Not fully boned, but with a reasonable proportion of the bone having been left it. Something which I ought to give a try at some point.

We decided that I had been a little enthusiastic about the fish and that it could be halved. First half soup for Saturday, second half kedgeree for Sunday. First half simmered in a couple of pints of water for three or four minutes, then taken out, skinned, flaked and put aside.

Chopped a couple of onions and fried them gently in an ounce and a half of butter. Roux in an ounce and a half of flour. Use some of the fish stock, coloured with a little semi-skimmed to make a white sauce.

In parallel, prepare some potatoes, cut into chunks of around 8 cubic centimetres and simmer them in what is left of the fish stock for around 15 minutes. Fairly early on, adding some finely sliced interior celery stalks.

Stir the sauce into the potatoes and their water, add the fish back in and then simmer for a few more minutes and serve. A total of around 5 pints according to the marks on the inside of the saucepan concerned. We probably did two thirds of it.

My verdict was format good, but it could have done with a bit more fish, in particular a bit more smoked. And I needn't have worried about the potato water being too salty as a result of cooking the fish in it first. While BH rather liked the blandness. 

The balance went through the blender to make a cream of haddock soup and was taken with brown bread a bit later on.

So an interesting and reasonably successful experiment. Experiment in the sense that it is a good while since I had made such a soup.

PS 1: interested to read in Friday's Evening Standard that Victoria House, the giant and once prestigious office block known as Victoria House is to be refurbished as life science laboratories. Maybe in the age of COVID there is more money in that than there is in office blocks. This one being last noticed at reference 1. I also came across a lonely advertisement for slab and kerb layers - which reminded of the days when the Standard used to have pages of advertisements for office jobs - secretarial & menial rather the the executive jobs which appeared in the morning broadsheets - and when the Evening News (another afternoon/evening paper, long ago gobbled up by the Standard) used to have pages of construction and building jobs. Which meant that in the late 1960's you could turn up in London, buy yourself (or pick up) a copy of the News and have the start on some building site by close of play.

PS 2: between the two rounds of soup, BH beat me at Scrabble for the fourth time in succession, possibly her personal best. At least on this last occasion the margin was not too embarrassing and I was even in the lead for some of the game. A run first reported at reference 2.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/05/boring.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/trolley-577.html.