We've had some cooler weather lately as summer fades, which has got me wanting soup. So this time I combined two recipes, a sea food minutal or thickened stew which called for little fish meatballs, the meatballs being the second recipe. First the minutal recipe proper, in the Latin and English as usual:
[4.3.1] minutal marinum: pisces in caccabum mittes, adicies liquamen oleum uinum cocturam. porros capitatos coriandrum minutatim concides, esiciola de pisce minuta facies et pulpas pisces cocti concarpis, urticas marinas bene lotas mittes. haec omnia cum cocta fuerint, teres piper ligusticum origanum; fricabis; liquamen suffundes, ius de suo sibi, exinanies in caccabum. cum ferbuerit tractam confringes, obligas, cum ferbuerit, agitas; piper aspargis et inferes.
4.3.1 Sea food minutal: put the fish in a pan, add liquamen, oil, wine, stock; chop leek and coriander finely, make finely ground fish forcement and flake the flesh of the cooked fish, and put in well-washed sea urchins. When all these are cooked, pound pepper, lovage, oregano, pound again, pour on liquamen and some of the cooking liquor and put it back into the pan. When it has come to the boil, crumble a tracta in, thicken it, and stir it when it comes to the boil (again); sprinkle with pepper and serve.
And the forcement or meatballs:
[2.1.1] isicia fiunt marina de cammaris et astacis de lolligine de sepia de lucusta. esicium condies pipere ligustico cumino laseris radice.
2.1.1 Seafood forcemeat is made from prawns and lobster, from squid, cuttlefish, and spiny lobster. You will season the forcemeat with pepper, lovage, cumin, and laser root.
First, a word on sea-urchins. There was pretty much no way I was going to get my hands on any of them, even though I understand (after a bit of research) that they are a trendy 'new' food in places like Los Angeles and New York City. From what I hear one only eats the coral, which is actually the ovaries of the thing, and it is a taste all its own that isn't like anything else, so there really isn't a substitute. I just left them out.
I also pretty much used whatever the supermarket had that looked interesting, so shrimp and something called langostino lobster tails went into the meatballs. I had no idea what 'langostino lobster' was, though looking at the prepared tail meat I figured it was some kind of crustacean, a small crayfish maybe. When I looked it up at home I found they aren't lobster, or shrimp either, but something else entirely sort of related to a hermit crab; however it does taste a lot like lobster, so they say. I also picked flounder for the generic 'fish' of the recipe. I don't really know the differences between all the white fish out there, if there are any.
One further note: I'd had leeks years ago and been kind of underwhelmed by them, but decided to give them another try. And again, I substituted parsley for the hated cilantro, but if you like cilantro go for it. And, alas, I substituted celery seed for the lovage again. I really wish I could find some of the stuff; lovage is really good.
So, this is what I came up with:
Seafood Meatballs
2 cups total your choice of seafood such as shrimp, lobster, squid, &c. peeled and deveined if necessary. (If frozen, thaw before measuring.)
1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon celery seed (or lovage if you can find the stuff)
1/4 teaspoon cumin seed
1/4 teaspoon asafoetida
Grind the seeds in a mortar to a fine powder. Put the seafood in a food processor and whizz to a paste, then empty into a mixing bowl and add the spices. Mix thoroughly, then set aside to use in the next recipe.
Seafood Minutal
1/4 pound fish fillet
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1/2 cup wine
1 1/2 cups stock (I used vegetable stock)
one leek (white/light green part only), chopped in half moon sections and thoroughly washed
decent handful fresh parsley or cilantro, chopped (came to about 1/4 cup)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon lovage or celery seed
1 teaspoon fresh oregano
corn starch to thicken
Put the fish fillet in a large, fairly deep skillet; add the oil, liquamen, wine, and stock, then the leeks and parsley or cilantro. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to a simmer. As it simmers, form the shrimp forcemeat balls (I made them about an inch big) and drop them into the stock mixture. Grind up the pepper, celery seed/lovage and oregano (or you can just chop the oregano and throw it in rather than attempting to mash it to a paste) and add them to the soup. When it's all cooked through (the leeks will probably take the longest) flake the fish if it hasn't managed that on its own and add a bit of cornstarch mixed with a little of the broth to thicken. Serve with more pepper sprinkled over it.
This came out pretty good, though the first thing I noticed was just how peppery the shrimp/lobster meatballs were. If you're into that sort of thing you'd probably love it, but it was a little much for me, and cutting back on the pepper probably would have allowed the taste of the 'lobster' to be more apparent. Though I could taste it still, and yes, it did have the sweetness of real honest-to-gods lobster. Otherwise though the spices were about right.
I'd been worried the forcemeat wasn't going to stick together, and was all set to cheat and add an egg to the mixture, but it was actually quite sticky and had no problem at all staying in ball shape. I suppose I should note that the shrimp was raw but the 'lobster' was already cooked; the raw shrimp was still plenty sticky to hold it all together.
I used flounder for the fish and it pretty much just disintegrated into the soup; there wasn't much question of 'flaking' it, and I guess I'd try to find a fish that holds together a little better. But it tasted fine.
I'm still kind of ambivalent on the leeks, I guess. Though that said the only thing I would change is to reduce the amount of pepper in the forcemeat balls; otherwise it was quite good even with the leeks. I'm going to put this in with the keepers, with that reservation then, though again, pepper really is one of those individual taste things and someone else might think the amount just right. It was quite well balanced as far as the rest of the spices went otherwise, and the meatballs themselves were quite tasty. So overall: pretty good.
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