Spicy Fish Soup

Not being great with recipes I took what I remembers from a previous spicy fish soup I made and rolled with it.

My ingredients were:

- 2 stalks of celery
- 3 medium sized carrots
- 1 large onion
- 6 small potatoes (3 cups once diced)
- Half a green pepper
- 3 jalapeno peppers
- 2 cloves of garlic
(All of the above were purchased at Pete’s Frootique in the Saint John City Market.)
- 1.5 slices of thick bacon
- 3 cups of chicken broth
- 3 cups of crushed tomatoes
- A pound of chowder mix (from Lord’s Lobster)
- El Yucateco Hot Sauce
- and just to be fancy, some steamed Mussels

What did I do:

I chopped up my onion, celery and carrots.  I chopped up some bacon and started it in a saucepan at medium heat.  When it was getting crispy I added in my onion, celery and carrots.

 

After sautéing that for about 15 minutes I added in some diced garlic and my chopper jalapenos.

I then added in some chopped green pepper.

Realizing this saucepan was far too small I then heated a mixture of 3 cups of broth with 3 cups of crushed tomatoes in a larger pot.

And added my 3 cups of chopped potatoes.

After letting that do its thing for about 20 minutes I added my veggies (and bacon) into the broth pot.

 

I let that simmer for a half hour.

Simmering was boring so I steamed some mussels in the meantime. I rinsed some mussels and made sure they were fit to cook (i made sure the open ones closed when hit with some cold water)

Then I steamed them in the remainder of my 900 ml chicken broth (having already taken 750 mils for the soup) and a bit of water.

Once you have  a hot pan, steaming mussels takes all of 4 minutes, so I snacked on a few waiting for the soup to finish.

It did:

I served up a bowl of this soup with a few dashed of hot sauce and a few mussels to be extra fancy.

A Saturday afternoon well spent.