Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Mariscos Soup Dinner

Okay, so I picked up Madeleina from school, along with a friend. Dropped him off, got her home. Half-an-hour later it was time to get her to piano lessons, and we got there about 5:21, six minutes late. I got home by 5:30 as it's about an 8-10 minute run from the piano place to the house.
    Here, I realized I had to get dinner going. Tonight it's mariscos soup. That's a Peruvian soup--all Latin America makes it and the Spanish and French and Portugese have versions, but I'm making the Peruvian soup--made from shrimp, mussels, squid, octopus and who knows what else. I had already bought a bag of frozen mariscos, but I had fresh shrimp in the fridge that had to be used as well.
    So I'm looking at things at 5:32 and start to peel the fresh shrimp. Just 20 of them, not very large, and I put the shells in a small iron pot to burn a bit. While they were heating up and getting red, I cut some fresh garlic, diced an onion, four scallions, two tomatoes and four sticks of celery. The ends of everything went into the shrimp-peel pot after the peels were bright red. I added water first, then the vegetable ends, along with a bit of crab boil--a hot soup sauce used in creole cooking.
    I got the garlic, onions and celery and scallions, along with some olive oil, into the soup pot and started searing them while the shrimp-peel pot began to boil over and then I turned that down. When the veggies were see through I tossed in the tomatoes: It was 5:54 and I was going to be late for Madeleina, so I turned everything down and raced to get her.
   Not bad. Veggies done, shrimp ready to go, and the shrimp-peel juice nearly ready.
   We got home, I stirred everything, strained and poured the shrimp-peel juice into the soup pot, tossed in a can of Campbell's tomato soup, some water and two packets of Goya's Achote e Culantro powder. Stirred it up and here I am. Kitchen is clean and wiped down, soup's on: I'll add the seafood and a bunch of fresh organic cilantro--minced--ten minutes before serving, along with some vermicelli. I'll do some pepper--it probably won't need salt because of the canned sou--and maybe a few very hot peppers from Peru that are steeping in fresh lime juice to give it a good Peruvian bite.
   It's a good soup, a good meal, and when I wake up at 3 AM, it will be a life-saving snack.
   I hope all of you are eating as well as us tonight. And if you're not and you're in the neighborhood, well, drop on by because we're gonna have plenty.

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