Prawn Creole

So I was flipping through 'The Soup Bible' and came across a recipe for prawn creole. We have a rather bare fridge at the moment so I was struggling to find a recipe that matched the ingredients we had kicking around. I thought that we had everything on the list but once I started, I found out we were missing a few things :P Here's my random recipe....

Ingredients

- 1.5 cups raw prawns, with shells 

- 2 cups water

- Drizzle olive oil

- 1.5 cups finely chopped onions (I used a mix of red and white)

- 3/4 cup finely chopped celery

- 3/4 cup finely chopped yellow pepper (it called for a green pepper...)

- 2 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley/basil (I used a combo)

- 1 garlic cloves, minced

- 1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce

- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

- 1/2 red wine (I was out of white... but it turned out great using red!)

- 1 cup chopped, peeled tomatoes (canned is fine!)

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1 bay leaf

- 1 tsp sugar

- Boiled rice to serve with it

This recipe had crazy time limits for every stage but I tried to follow as closely as I could/wanted too :P First I removed the prawn shells and boiled them in 2 cups of water for 20ish minutes. Then I poured it through a sieve, saving only 1.5 cups of stock. 

Next I heated the oil and sauteed the onions on low for 8 minutes. I added the celery, peppers and garlic... gave it a good stir and let it cook for 5 minutes. Then I mixed in the fresh herbs, Worcestershire and cayenne. After another 5 minutes I raised the heat to medium, added the wine, and simmered for 4 minutes. Next I added the tomatoes, salt, sugar and bay leaf and then let it simmer for 30 minutes. Start the rice early enough that it is done when the soup should be... every rice maker is different so I can't help with this :S

I blended the soup in the magic bullet for a few seconds, just until it had smaller chunks... this is hard to describe. I find pureed soup depends more on personal taste... Matt doesn't like it very smooth so I leave it more chunky. I would just stop and check a few times until you like the consistency. Then I threw it back in the pot with the prawns and let it boil for 5 minutes. Once the prawns are cooked, just pour the soup over a bowl of rice!!

Matt has the beginning of a cold so he LOVED the hot and spicy with a sore throat combo... I loved it too. It had great flavour and a nice after bite. For the non-prawn eaters out there... cough cough Michelle cough... I would definitely try this with chicken instead!