Iberia · Volume 06, The Rice Coast
Suquet de Peix
Catalonia
Illustration
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 37 sources in the brief
Suquet, from "suquejar," to release juice, was born aboard the boats of the Costa Brava and the Maresme, built from whatever fish had no commercial value that day. Catalan sources are explicit that it varies household to household and village to village rather than having one canonical recipe, which this chapter respects by giving a representative version rather than a definitive one.
As tradition built it
About 20 minutes.
Ingredients
- 1kg rockfish
- 500g monkfish
- 1kg potato
- 250g clams
- 2 to 3 cloves garlic, for the sofregit
- 1 tomato, for the sofregit
- to cover water or a light stock, to cover
- 30 to 50g almonds, for the picada
- one slice fried bread, for the picada
Method
- Cook the rockfish, monkfish, potato and clams in a sofregit of garlic and tomato with enough water or light stock to cover.
- Simmer until the potato is tender.
- Pound a picada of almonds and fried bread and stir it in at the very end, thickening and rounding the broth without flour or cream.
What a modern chef changes
Stock built sous vide, picada finished through a chinois
Rungs 1 and 4
Method
- Build the fish stock sous vide from the trimmings, held at a controlled temperature for several hours (rung 1), giving a cleaner extraction than an open simmer.
- Build the picada (rung 4) in a high-power blender and finish it with a spoonful of the reserved shellfish liquid rather than water, giving it a rounder savoury depth than the traditional dry pounded paste.
- Stir the picada through a chinois into the finished broth for a silkier texture, a genuinely restaurant-register finish rather than a claim that it corrects anything wrong with the rustic original.