Waterzooi - What a Triumph!

Waterzooi

I hadn't heard of it before but apparently waterzooi is a classic Belgian dish. In her recipe Marie-Pierre Moine lists the ingredients as potato, carrot, courgette, asparagus, monkfish, sole, fish or chicken stock, dry white wine, spring onions, mussels and cream. Oh yes, and chopped tarragon to garnish. A quick internet search tells me that these are not typical ingredients. What do I know? I'm just following The Soup Book's orders.

Ingredients for waterzooi

Anyway, I wanted to make a special soup to celebrate the older offspring's presence. We don't often splash out and buy monkfish, sole and mussels. The spouse was assigned to fishing duty. He headed up to his favourite fishmonger's shop and did the necessary. Mr Fishmonger kindly advised him that the mussels were from a different supplier and that we should give them a good wash.

The prep time for this soup was given as twenty minutes and the cooking time thirty minutes. Not for this slow coach, of course. I prepared my vegetables, peeling the potato and carrots and cutting them into batons, slicing the courgette and chopping the asparagus. I also started a baked pear frangipane for pudding. Then I went off for a little rest.

In with the vegetables

After a while I girded my loins and went back to the hob. First into the casserole dish were stock, wine and spring onions. This was the mixture in which I simmered the potato, carrots, courgette and asparagus at different stages and for different amounts of time. I lifted the vegetables out of the stock then did the mussel murder. I took the cooked mussels out of the stock, poured in the cream, then poached the monkfish and sole in this creamy mixture. To finish off, I tipped the vegetables and mussels back into the mixture to reheat them.

Waterzooi

As I ladled out each bowlful I sprinkled it with chopped spring onions and tarragon then waited for the comments. Our guest of honour was very impressed, even commenting on how this soup had helped him to overcome his wariness of asparagus! "Excellent!" pronounced the spouse. The younger offspring liked it too. What we all agreed on was that the next time - and there has to be a next time -  I would either slice the courgettes thinner or leave them out all together.



Honey Show

I popped up to the honey show last Saturday but was there too late to buy any honey. Never mind.

Meanwhile, back at home, a pal of Young Stephen's ("Iffy") did a good job tidying up my garden last week. He even chopped up some bamboo for me and filled up my bee box with it!

My bee box

That's it for this week.

Minnie