As those who know and love me best realize that one of the things in the world I hate most is waste. One of my favorite fairy tales, in fact, is Stone Soup—how two travelers convinced a town that they could make a nourishing soup from a stone and some boiling water. They just needed one or two things besides that . . . I love that story. I aspire to cook like that story. Starting with boiling water, and then you look at what scraps and miscellaneous things you have about to add. and make a soup.
No waste.
So here is a story about shrimp shells, how to save them, what to do with them. Mainly because they were the beginnings of a great dinner’s fish soup. The base of that fish soup was a broth made from shrimp shells. These were collected over who knows how long in a little plastic ziploc bag as I stripped them of their meat.
To start the soup, I pulled that ziploc bag out of the freezer and I threw those shrimp shells in a pot. Covered them with water and brought it to a simmer. Nothing but leftover shrimp shells.
While that was going on, I washed a half onion I had in the fridge and cut it in half. Washed two garlic cloves and cut them in half. Into the pot they went.
Then I scrubbed an organic carrot and an organic stalk of celery. These would go into the soup at a later time, but right then, their trimmings, and the carrot peels, went into the pot. Along with some wilted parsley sprigs from the end of my shopping cycle. A few peppercorns. I think I forgot the bay leaf that time, but I did remember to delve back into the freezer for another little ziploc bag holding my cheese rind collection. A parmesan rind was extracted and tossed into the broth as well. A little salt. A little MSG.
A detour for a moment to talk about that MSG. You know how I always go on about how fashions change in cookbooks? How one decade scorns russet potatoes as being lacking in integrity, and the following one insists they are far better than boiling potatoes for the nice crumbly way they smoosh in potato salad? Well, there is a similar change about MSG. Read a cookbook from, say, the ‘70s. It will warn you that MSG is a chemical that will give you headaches, make you sterile, etc. etc. etc. But all of this is an Old Wives Tale. An Old White Wives Tale, since it probably started in an unconsciously racist revulsion against the lure of Chinese restaurant food. Supposedly if you ate in a Chinese restaurant, you would get a headache from all of that wicked MSG. It sounds terrible doesn’t it? Monosodium glutamate. Bbbbbrrr. But it turns out MSG is just an enzyme from the papaya, and it will no more harm you than pepper, or table salt, or soy sauce, or even that darling of the Protestant food cupboard, Worcestershire sauce. And a little addition of MSG does indeed add to flavor. I notice there are restaurants that now actually advertise it as an ingredient.
Back to the shrimp shell broth. I let it simmer for a couple of hours. While that was going on, I minced up another onion. Another two garlic cloves. The peeled carrot stick. The celery stalk. A few more wilted sprigs of parsley. A serrano chile pepper.
Aha. In the freezer, to my delight, I also found about a half a dozen still frozen shrimp. So I put them in a bowl of cold water until they were thawed enough to give up their shells. I threw those in the pot, and chopped the shrimp up to be ready to add at the last minute to the soup. Then there was the last quarter of a bag of squid rings. I dumped half of them on the cutting board, and chopped them frozen with a sturdy knife. You probably know this about squid: it either has to cook a really long time, or a really short time. So this batch would cook the long time, and I’d add the other half later along with the quick cooking shrimp . . . and maybe something else. What else? I pondered.
Taking out another pot for the soup, I splooshed some Spanish olive oil in, the same kind I would use for the garlic mayo later, and dumped the veggies on top. Sauteed them while I made the mayonnaise (by the way, first try the mayo broke because my kitchen was too cold, and I was going too fast. Always take your time with mayonnaise. As with so many other things). Five cloves of garlic mashed in a mortar and pestle added to the sauce. Let sit to deepen flavor.
Back to the soup pot where the veggies and misc. sauteed. I splooshed a whole bunch of tomato paste on top and gave the whole thing a stir. Added a couple of roasted Roma tomatoes I found hiding in a bowl in the back of the refrigerator. Stirred until it all smelled nice.
So now what? Now I drained the shrimp shell broth, which smelled nice and shrimpy, into the soup pot. Aha, there was the end of a box of tiny ditalini pasta in the fridge, untouched since last summer’s minestrone. I threw that in too. A little anchovy paste for umami. But there was something in the back of my mind, something that needed using up. Back to my cupboard. Aha. A can of chopped clams. Past the expiration date.
Another detour while we talk about expiration dates. These are by no means a rule to live by. What I live by is whether the contents smell foul or nice. If nice, the worst that will happen if the can has expired is the contents may not have all the flavor they had at the start. Hah. Just add more garlic.
So I took the expired clam can, opened it, and sniffed cautiously. Smelled fresh and clammy, so that was okay. I dumped the juice of the clam into the soup pot, and put the can in the fridge next to the raw shrimp and what was left of the squid rings. (Did I mention that calamari is squid? But perhaps you knew that already.)
I cooked the now soup until the pasta was done and the little bits of squid were tender. Turned it off and considered.
It was hours till dinner, a dinner I wanted to be a little festive, yet easy on the digestion, since the Beloved Vegetarian Husband would be arriving home after a trip away, and after a long truck drive through snowy mountains. He loves garlic mayonnaise. So this was really just an excuse to go with that.
Garlic mayonnaise cries out for saffron in a fish soup. At least to me it does. So I soaked a little saffron in a little sherry from a bottle in the refrigerator, where I keep a bottle on hand always, since it lasts forever and is nice to add to soups now and then. Added that to the turned off soup, and came out here, to my little office by the little snowy stream, to work. But I just kept thinking about that soup, and what I would do to it later. As I kept an ear out for the sounds of the Dear Husband’s truck roaring up the drive through the meadow.
This is what I did. When we got closer to the dinner hour, and he was settled by the fire with a beer, and I’d poured myself a nice glass of red wine, I turned that soup base on to simmer. And then, about fifteen minutes before we wanted to eat, I added the raw shrimp, the still partially frozen squid rings, and the can of chopped clams. I let that simmer until the shrimp turned pink, and the squid turned quickly tender. About three minutes, I’d say. Then I took it off the heat and let it sit while I chopped the rest of the wilted parsley to scatter on top. And took a couple of pieces of sourdough bread out of the plastic ziploc bag they got stored in when I was worried we wouldn’t finish the loaf before it started to mold. I toasted those and rubbed them with a piece of garlic.
Poured out glasses of water in tumblers. Lit the candle in the hurricane glass shell. Put a soup spoon at each place.
Served it forth, with garlic mayonnaise and parsley atop, more at the table to add at will. And the toasted sourdough to use in any way the diner pleased.
We sat down and took a deep inhale. Some desultory talk. After all, he was tired after his drive, and I’d done a lot of work today. So I had time to let my mind wander, and maybe indulge in a little guilty self-satisfaction. Oh, I thought, as I saw the Husband add another spoonful of garlic mayo to his soup and give a happy sigh, shrimp shells. All of this started with shrimp shells. That didn’t, after all, go to waste.