Fish soup is one of those dishes, that doesn’t come up on our menus very often. At least not here in Styria, where we are more used to traditional soups such as beef soup. However, I’m confident you will positively surprise even those who prefer something more traditional if you follow our recipe.
To prepare this dish you will need a whole bass. It’s important to use a fish as fresh as possible, to get the best flavour. First off you will need to fillet the fish. Don’t worry it’s much easier than it sounds. All you need is a sharp knife and to look up a couple of videos of how to fillet a bass or any fish online. There are lots of great resources around.
When you’re done put the head and the spine into cold water along with some ginger, lemon, garlic, scallion, parsley and a pinch of salt. Slowly bring up the soup to a slight simmer. For how long? As long as possible! Don’t worry about overcooking any meat that’s left on the head or spine, as you won’t need it later. When cooking it longer, the flavours will integrate better and the soup will be tastier.
While it’s cooking, you can prepare the filling for you tortelini.
Fine chop the fish fillets and scallions, add a spoonful of sour cream, some lemon juice and a bit of salt and pepper. Mix everything together and put it in the fridge will you prepare the dough.
A large egg for 100g of flour and a pinch of salt is a simple, yet perfect ratio for making tortelini or any other type of pasta. Knead the ingredients thoroughly and add some squid ink to turn it … black! Roll out the dough as thin as you can and cut out equally sized squares. Put on the filling and fold it into tortelini.
Cook your tortelini in the fish soup, which you strained beforehand. Wait for them to float up to the surface and continue to cook for about half a minute. Serve the soup with some soy sauce and scallion.
INGREDIENTS:
- Whole bass
- Ginger
- Lemon
- Garlic
- Scallion
- Parsley
- Sour cream
- Salt
- Pepper
- Egg
- Flour
- Squid ink
- Soy sauce
TIP: Use all the leftovers from filleting the fish in the soup. Only this way you will be able to achieve the full flavour of this fish soup. You can also use different kinds of fish, according to your preference.
Check out how we did it in the video.
