Welcome to Week XXIX of 'Fishing Parkland Shorelines'. Like most of us I am a novice fisherman, loving to fish, but far from an expert, In the following weeks I'll attempt to give those anglers who love to fish but just don't have access a boat a look at some of the options in the Yorkton area where you can fish from shore, and hopefully catch some fish for a good summer fry.
It's a warm day for November and I can still see a rod case leaning in the corner. It reminds me of fishing and my missed opportunity to make fish head soup.
But the Canadian Football League semi finals were scheduled in a couple of days, and it's great to have something special to eat watching the games.
So my mind started to percolate on the idea of fish soup.
There were still a couple of walleye and pike in the freezer so there was the key ingredient close at hand.
Now over the season writing these articles I have had several readers comment that they had not realized I was such an avid fisherman, not surprising since I don't usually fish on Broadway Street. Unless you are at the same fishing hole you wouldn't have known it is a passion.
Well another little known secret about yours truly in that I love to cook. I am the type of cook who never uses a recipe book, although I often peruse them just for ideas. I mix those germs of ideas with watching a few cooking shows (I loved the original Iron Chef from Japan), and a few web searches, and then sort of create dishes on the fly.
Yes I do make an ingredient list, but portions depend on how many people I am cooking for, and spices are added as a matter of taste, never by measurement.
In this case I had three basic ideas which would become the heart of creating the soup, it would be fished based, it would be hearty as meal and with the cooler weather, and its primary spice would be curry.
A soup starts with a stock, and since we skin walleye and freeze still on the bones, it was pretty easy to cut away the flesh and have the bones life to boil.
The pike fillets were trimmed further to remove the 'Y' bones, which of course had meat on them, so they went in the stock pot too.
Once the bones had boiled good it was easy to strain off the soup, snack a bit on the flesh which was boiled on the bones - cook's prerogative -- and I was left with a clear fish broth as the soup's starting point.
Giving some familiar aromatics, carrots, celery and leeks, a quick braise added to the initial flavour profile.
As for the 'hearty' aspect of the soup I wanted something that would stick to your ribs as they say, so I went with a couple of standards potatoes and white beans, then added some celery root, and sweet potato.
You might not be familiar with cooking with celery root, but it acts much like a potato in soups and stews with a mild celery flavour.
Sweet potatoes are another root veggie that many might not think about for a soup, but they work great. Just add to the pot a bit later than regular potatoes because they will fall apart if cooked too long.
The final add for heartiness was wild rice.
And then it was time for spices.
To start with monitor the salt in a fish soup. I find fish is one of those things which needs more salt -- tomato-based dishes are the same for me. As such if salt is an issue look for a substitute.
Curry to taste, that's a fair bit in my case.
Turmeric, cumin and tarragon were added. I also bought a small chunk of fresh ginger root and grated that into the soup as well.
To give the dish some added 'heat' chili flakes were a must, and when tasting later I used a few shakes of a hot sauce to bolster things further. Again folks this is something where you need to add to taste.
You truly cannot cook a soup without repeatedly tasting it to best measure its evolving flavour.
And of course don't forget to add the walleye and pike in chunks. I tried to get every bone, but we did find a couple eating the soup, so as is always the case eating fish, be vigilante.
After that it was letting the soup simmer away to combine flavours until it was time to add the final ingredient.
A few minutes before serving I added canned coconut milk. It added to the richness of the soup in a major way, and added a subtle flavour as well.
And there you have it folks, Calvin's Coconut Curry Fish Soup.
I was definitely satisfied with the result of the kitchen experiment.
It might not have had quite the 'aura' you would associate with fish head soup, that eye staring back as a highlight of a bowl, but it was a great way to enjoy the bounty of your fishing efforts.
While I used pike and walleye most any fish caught locally would work. I may even look at an early run redhorse sucker in a soup next spring. It would at least make a stock and you strain the broth and toss all the bones anyway. Ditto the potential to try it with a carp too. If the broth were to taste muddy it would be pretty simple to switch to a plan 'B' and such make a vegetable soup.
So do like I did, experiment a bit and enjoy the results.
