You may or may not have noticed a severe lack of seafood recipes over here on Planet Byn. Seeing as how my whole family is from the Maritimes, my seafood aversion is pretty much a genetic mystery. The only fish I eat is plain white: tilapia, halibut, grouper, mahi mahi. So Brooke is here to provide the very first seafood recipe for my blog, and I even created a new category for it over there on the right. Kind of ironic considering she’s a land locked Calgarian! Here we go Brooke!

This past weekend I had a gent visiting me from out of town. He’s pretty cute, and my Aunt Jerri is always saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach…so it was fitting that I whipped up a batch of her Bouillabaise soup after a long day of skiing.

I love this soup because it has tons of great flavours! It is a blend of all sorts of goodness and the dill really gives it a nice kick :). It’s pretty expensive being a seafood lover living in Calgary, but we found a great little seafood market that actually had pretty good selection…and they are super helpful too…so there is hope for us inland seafood lovers 🙂

Aunt Jerri’s Bouillabaise Soup (aka Fish Stew)

Source: Brooke’s Aunt Jerri

Yield: Brooke says this will serve 3 or 4

Ingredients

4 tbsp (1/2 stick) butter

2 carrots, diced

2 celery stalks, diced

3 shallots, minced

4 garlic cloves, minced

fresh dill (to taste)

freshly ground black pepper (to taste)

4 x 14oz cans clam nectar

3/4 cup white wine (drink the rest of the bottle with dinner, so pick one you like)

1 cup baby plum tomatoes, cut in half

24 mussels

24 clams

12 scallops

12 prawns

200 grams cod or mahi mahi, cut into bite size pieces

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a large saucepan. Add carrots, celery, shallots, garlic, dill and pepper, and saute for a few minutes, until vegetables have softened.
  2. Add clam nectar, white wine and tomatoes, stir to combine.
  3. Clean off the mussels and clams (test them to ensure they are alive – if they are open, just tap them on the counter and see if they close on their own, if they don’t, throw them out) and add them to the pot.
  4. When they open, add all other fish…a good test is as soon as prawns turn pink/salmon colour the other should be cooked.  The white fish should be no more than 5 minutes (1-2 if it’s cod) in the boiling broth or it will over cook.