I have loved leather jacket fish since I was a little girl, such beautiful white flesh and it is not too fishy, really good for steaming. This week I walked past a fish shop and found some really fresh leather jacket fish, but too big to fit into my steamer.  So I made seafood chowder using leather jacket fish for stock. So yummy…

The recipe is as follows:

Fish stock

Ingredients

• 2 potatoes, diced
• 2 carrot, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 100g leek (white part), diced
• 3 glove of garlic
• 5g of mixed herbs – parsley, thyme, marjoram (dry or fresh)
• 2 pieces of bay leaves (dry or fresh)
• 5 black pepper corns, crushed
• 3 rashes of bacon, diced
• 1 leather jacket (or other inexpensive whole fish, or fish bones), approx 500g, cut into chunks
• prawn heads & shells (optional) – with the prawns I use for the soup, I peeled off the heads and shells and added them to the stock.
• 2 cups of white wine
• cooking oil

Method

• In a heavy base pot, add some cooking oil; add leek, onion, bacon and prawn heads & shells (if used); stir fry until aromatic, approximately 2-3 minutes; add the other vegetables, herbs, pepper & fish chunks, stir fry for a few minutes; add white wine; top up with water until all ingredients are covered; bring the stock to boil; close the lid and simmer for 90 minutes; stir occasionally.
• Drain/filter the stock, discard all solids.

Seafood chowder

Ingredients

• 12 prawns, heads & shell removed & deveined
• a few handful of clams (with or without shell)
• 300g fillet of white flesh fish (I used barramundi, but leather jacket fillet is also suitable), roughly cut into chunks
• 150m thicken cream (more if you prefer a more creamy soup)
• 1 tbs potato starch, mixed well with 3 tbs of water
• 1 tsp turmeric (for color)
• salt and white pepper to taste
• some parsley for garnish (optional)

Method

• In a saucepan, bring the stock to boil; add turmeric, stir; add the thicken cream, stir; add the potato starch mixture, stir until the soup thicken lightly
• add the prawns & fish, cook for 1-3 minutes (depending on the size of the prawns & fish) or until they are just cooked; add the clams, and turn off the heat (the remaining heat in the saucepan will cook the clams); remove the saucepan from heat; set aside for 5 minutes before serving; add salt and pepper to taste.
• Garnish with parsley (optional)