Cape Town by Mouth

Adding corn and bacon to soups seems to be my thing of the moment. Here we go again! Using prawn heads for a quick stock adds some great flavour (something I picked up from making Tom yum soup). This makes a great quick dinner or an elegant dinner party starter. Shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to prepare.

seafood chowder

Serves 2:

1 onion
1 celery
2 strips of bacon
1 sweet potato
2 cobs of corn, kernels cut off
2 cups dry white wine (sav blanc works especially well)
4 cups/ 1 liter veg stock
8 prawns with heads, cut heads off (don’t through away) and deshell them.
pinch of chilli
1 tsp paprika
1 tbsp soy sauce
300g calamari
fresh parsley and chives

Sweat the onion, bacon and celery in a hot pan until just starting to brown. Add the sweetpotato and corn kernels and stir for five mins. Add the white wine and let it boil for five minutes. Add the stock and the prawn heads and boil for ten minutes.

Take out the prawn heads and bacon and discard them. Puree the soup with a handblender and press it through a fine sieve. Add the chilli, paprika and soy sauce and season to taste. You can prepare it to this point in advance.

When ready to serve, bring the soup to a boil and add the sliced calamari and prawns. Take off the heat (calamari goes rubbery if you keep it on). Let it sit for a few minutes and serve with fresh parsley and chives and some nice crusty bread.

Seafood chowder

seafood chowder

Made this one ages ago. We don’t have access to razorclams here : (makes a good starter. This would probably work well with nice fleshy fish like monkfish or with scallops.

Ingredients for two:

1 shallot finely sliced

1 clove of garlic finely sliced

16 razor clams

100g ish chorizo sliced (small dried chorizo sausage)

1/2tbsp paprika

1/2 bottle of white wine

parsley, coriander, mint and chives roughly chopped

salt & pepper

groundnut oil & nob of butter for frying

Lightly fry shallot and garlic until soft but not brown. Add chorizos and fry for a bit. Add wine and paprika and boil until starts to reduce.  Add clams and cover with a lid. Add fresh herbs and take of heat once shells have opened.

We had a glorious weekend thanks to Mike & Liz and their beautiful home in Misty Cliffs. On sunday morning before breakfast we did a little scavenge for mussels and here is how we enjoyed them.

Ingredients for two:

30 Mussels

pretty much a whole bottle of white wine
1 bulb of fennel, finely sliced

1 onion sliced

2 cloves of garlic sliced

1tbsp paprika

butter

2 chillies

pinch of cayenne pepper

coarsely chopped coriander and parsley

Prep the mussels. Cut the beards off as well as any little friends growing on top of them. Discard any that do not close or have cracks in their shells. Leave in a colander.

Soften onions, garlic and fennel in butter. Add the rest of the ingredients (except herbs) and let it boil for a bit. Add the mussels and fresh herbs and close the lid. Mussels are ready as soon as they have opened. takes about 5-10 mins. Serve in bowls with plenty of sauce and crusty white bread.

This is a proper scandie classic and we always eat it at home at Christmas. Really easy to make, you just need some nice fresh salmon and dill and voila.

1 tbsp coarse sea salt/ rock salt
1 tsp sugar
600g salmon
40g dill chopped

Cover salmon fillet with the rock salt, sugar and dill and rub in. Wrap tightly in cling wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours. Slice finely and serve with mustard sauce and proper dark rye bread.

Emily’s mustard sauce
Mustard (ideally of the Swedish/Finnish not so strong variety)
Sunflower oil
chopped dill

Whisk sunflower oil into mustard in a thin stream until nicely emulsified. Add chopped dill