Oriental mussel soup
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon sunflower oil
- 3 spring onions sliced
- ½ red pepper cored, deseeded, diced
- 1 garlic clove finely chopped
- 2.5 cm piece of fresh root ginger peeled and grated
- 3 teaspoons ready-made red Thai curry paste
- 400 ml can full-fat coconut milk
- 450 ml fish or vegetable stock see page 13
- 2 teaspoons Thai fish sauce grated rind of
- 1 lime small bunch of coriander
- 500 g mussels scrubbed and beards removed, any cracked or open mussels discarded
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large shallow saucepan, add the spring onions, red pepper, garlic and ginger and fry for 2 minutes. Stir in the curry paste and cook for 1 minute, then mix in the coconut milk, stock, fish sauce and lime rind. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Snip half the coriander into the soup using scissors. Add the mussels then cover and cook for 8–10 minutes until the mussels have opened.
- Scoop the mussels out of the soup with a slotted spoon and put on to a large plate. Discard any shut mussels then reserve half the opened mussels in their shells for garnish. Take the remaining mussels out of their shells and stir them back into the soup. Ladle the soup into bowls, top with the reserved mussels in shells and garnish with the remaining snipped coriander. Serve with warm crusty bread for dunking into the soup.
Notes / Tips / Wine Advice:
For saffron mussel soup, fry 3 sliced spring onions, 2 cloves finely chopped garlic, ½–1 deseeded and finely chopped large mild red chilli according to taste, ½ a red pepper and ½ a yellow or orange pepper, deseeded and diced in 1 tablespoon olive oil until softened. Add 3 large pinches of saffron threads, 150 ml (¼ pint) white wine and 750 ml (1¼ pints) fish or vegetable stock. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the mussels as above then cover and simmer until the shells have opened. Serve in shallow bowls garnished with snipped parsley.