I was talking food with a young chap called Ezra, when he mentioned a sweet and sour prawn soup from somewhere vaguely Far Eastern.
I promptly forgot the soup's rather exotic name and I'm far too lazy to look it up, but one essential point actually registered in the decaying grey matter.
You boil up all the prawn heads, skins and other gubbins to add to the stock. Being very much in a waste-not want-not phase, the basic idea appealed so I made my own soup. Never can understand anybody else's recipes anyway . . .
As you're probably aware, prawns just love it hot and sweet so here goes:
* Skin 500g of cooked prawns. I diverted some of the flesh into an cunningly-placed dhansak sauce but kept all the debris for the soup. If you're just making soup,cut the prawns to say 300g.
* Put all the skins etc in two mug of water in a saucepan
* Skin and crush/grate three cloves of garlic, an inch of ginger root and chopped hot chillies to taste, fresh if you can, otherwise dried, or maybe an inch squdge of harissa toothpaste. Add to saucepan.
* Boil the lot together for ten minutes.
* In a second saucepan, fry a finely chopped onion in butter until soft. You could add some finely chopped red pepper.
* Pour the liquid from the first pan through a sieve into the second. Discard the debris.
* Add a veg stock cube, a shake of paprika and of black pepper and four mugs of water.
* Bring back to boil, add chopped prawns and a handful of chopped, fresh bean sprouts, a slosh of soy sauce, and simmer for five minutes.
* Serve
PS This kind of soup is a bit of a movable feast. I added a handful of mixed frozen seafood because I wanted to finish the packet. You could try a bit of finely chopped crab meat. If your chillies are fresh you could add them at the frying stage. You could also add noodles or a little finely chopped pineapple. Chop the noodles and bean sprouts so that they will sit conveniently on a soup spoon
Sounds like my kind of soup. I've kept the 'recipe' for future use. Thanks.
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