Catalan fish soup (suquet de peix). It starts with a base of tomatoes and garlic cooked in olive oil. In Catalan that’s a sofregit (pronounced so-fruh-geet, or a sofrito in Spanish; Wikipedia has a good list of the different ways to make a sofrito by country and region.) The more distinctively Catalan part of it comes at the end, when you add a picada: ten almonds and a garlic clove cooked on the stove and mashed together in a mortar. You normally include a tablespoon of parsley as well, but I’m a purist when it comes to using vegetables in season so I added a little dried thyme instead, which is not the same thing, but oh well. To make the soup, you add chopped potatoes to the sofregit and cook them in wine, fish stock or chicken broth, a pinch of saffron, and a little sugar. At the very end you add your chosen types of seafood in the order of how long they take to cook; I had clams, halibut, and shrimp. Add the picada a couple minutes before the soup is done. I found that it would have been best to take the clams out of their shells before serving to add a little more salt and complete the dish.
(Photo: The recipe is from The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden, and is also reprinted in The Telegraph.)
365 Days of Food 