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North Sea Fish Soup

Shaun Hill is the author of today's soup, North Sea fish soup, and he advises that as the seafood must be "just cooked", dense fish should be cut into small pieces or added earlier. It was a simple soup to make as there was no frying or whizzing. The only panicked moment or ten that I experienced was when I couldn't find the cod loins the spouse had bought. I am terrible when it comes to finding things and can usually rely on the spouse to find whatever it is I'm looking for. It's the main reason I married him. But even he was almost as useless as I was. I could remember riffing on the topic of cod loins earlier in the day. The older offspring had asked: "Why cod loins? Do cod have loins? Do they walk?" Fair point. I remembered asking was it a spelling mistake? Had the packager meant to write "cod lions", and so it continued.All very silly.

North Sea fish soup: final addition of the tomato and parsley
Ready to eat
The ingredients for North Sea fish soup include mixed fish fillets and shellfish (red mullet, bass, haddock, cod, salmon, turbot, raw shrimps or shelled scallops are the author's suggestions), lemon juice, fish or chicken stock (I used chicken - I've been clearing out the freezer), white wine, shallots, egg yolk, double cream, tomato, and chopped parsley. We already had haddock and salmon in the freezer so I asked the spouse to buy cod (see above). The longest part of the preparation was the defrosting. The second longest part was trying to find the cod loins. I had to prise the spouse from his attic activities to help me look for them. I started to defrost some crabmeat in case I couldn't find the cod and I even phoned the older offspring who was dining elsewhere so that he could help me visualise my earlier movements. Then the spouse, who had looked in the cupboards and the bin, found them where I thought I'd put them - in the fridge. Someone had put something on top of them. It wasn't me.

Eventually the soup was ready and the spouse, younger offspring and I took up our soup spoons and tucked in. It wasn't bad: not as good as last weekend's cotriade, however, but still worth making again.

Anyone who's been keeping count will know that this is the eightieth recipe I've used from The Soup Book. Apart from the Winter Vegetable section, I've made at least one third of each section's recipes.


Death of Girl Beehiving Badly

The most frequent bee reference I came across during the week was to the death of Amy Winehouse - nearly every article referred to her beehive hairdo. Excuse the pun above - no disrespect intended to her. So here's a link to my favourite of her songs: Back to Black.What a voice.

 Bee Inspired

This link is to another beehive story. To be more accurate, to a blog about bees: Beeing Inspired. 
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