Sea Food Online

Seafood Soup

When seafood soup is served to start off a meal, it might be a light broth with a few small cubes of fish and perhaps a hint of chives or parsley; or it might be a small bowl of rich creamy bisque or thick North American chowder flavored with milk and cream or with tomatoes. At Mexican seafood restaurants, I've also had chowder-like first-course fish soups, but they were lighter and spicier than their New England counterparts.

Add vegetables to a seafood soup, and serve it with rice, noodles or hearty bread, and it becomes substantial enough to play the role of a main course. A mildly seasoned seafood soup that we savored at a Honduran restaurant owed its rich texture and luscious flavor to coconut milk; served with a generous mound of rice, it was a meal in a bowl. Coconut milk often enriches Thai seafood soup entrees, like a satisfying one I ate at a pan-Asian restaurant; it contained noodles, mushrooms and green onions, and was pungent from hot peppers and tangy from lime juice. An usual and very tasty central Vietnamese seafood curry soup that I sampled was embellished with quail eggs, peanuts, noodles, green onions, cilantro leaves and fried onions, and served with a large fried sesame cracker. People use ingredients with which they are familiar. I've even made a tasty fish soup supper by cooking cubes of salmon in a pot of vegetable soup.

Most Westerners associate seafood soup with Mediterranean cuisine, which includes many fish soups in addition to the bouillabaisse of France and the ciuppin of Italy. Spanish, Greek, North African and Lebanese cooks all make fish soups matching the produce of the Mediterranean with the region's popular flavors - olive oil, garlic, onions, tomatoes and aromatic herbs.

Because fish cooks rapidly, fish soups are easy to prepare and are ready in less time than most main-course soups. They're great for weight watchers, as they can be fairly low in fat. For a festive version, you can use a little oil to sauté the vegetables and flavor the broth, but for an everyday soup, you can simply simmer the vegetables along with the fish.