Saturday, 27 October 2012
shrimp soup
We had a few shrimp languishing in the freezer so decided to make a vague facsimile of wonderful fish soup we first tried at “Terroir La Cachette”, the restaurant at Strewn Winery in Niagara. (Please read more about that here.)
There is something so comforting about sitting inside where it’s warm (or at least warmer than outside… DON’T get me started on how many sweaters and shawls are required), listening to wind rattle the windows and sitting down to a big bowl of life giving soup.
We always buy shrimps with shells and tails still attached. Obviously, this would make shrimp soup tricky to eat. So we carefully shelled the shrimps before cooking them.
But we didn’t throw away the shells and tails. Oh my no! We put them into a little water and made stock to add to the soup.
Because it was a little chilly and rainy outside, we decided to add some potatoes to the soup too.
And the green onion? Why, that is from our garden! Last year, I planted lots of sprouts – mustard, onion, radish… and this spring one of the onion seeds sprouted. I imagined it was going to be a real onion. I watered it and weeded around it, tending it with such care.
When the nights started dropping to around 5C, I decided it was time to harvest our single onion. We had grand plans for that onion. While I was digging out the onion, I saw that one of the nasturtium plants had flowered at last. Score!! Two things from the garden! I might go so far as to say this is a banner year. 
At first I was quite disappointed that I wasn’t pulling up a big round beautiful onion. But then I realized how lovely this lone green onion was.
While our grand plans were dashed, I suppose the onion still ended up in a rather grand dish, didn’t it?
We were radical and served the soup with cornbread and steamed broccoli (nope, no photo of the broccoli). Dinner, as usual, was delicious.
