Kakavia

A fish soup where the first fish are cooked to pieces to make the broth and a second lot goes in whole at the end.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg mixed small whole fish, gutted and scaled
• 600 g firm white fish, in large pieces
• 3 onions, thickly sliced
• 4 potatoes, in thick rounds
• 3 carrots, in thick rounds
• 2 celery sticks with leaves
• 200 ml olive oil
• 2 lemons
• 2 litres water
• salt and pepper

Method

1. THE FIRST FISH ARE SACRIFICED AND THE SECOND ARE SERVED. Small bony fish are simmered until they fall apart and are then pushed through a sieve and thrown away; everything they had is in the broth. Good firm pieces go in only at the end, for eight minutes. Cook one lot of fish for the whole time and you get either a thin broth or a pan of shredded fish, never both.
2. AND IT IS NEVER STIRRED WITH A SPOON. The pan is SHAKEN. Potato rounds and fish pieces both break up under a spoon and the soup turns cloudy and grey; shaken, everything stays whole.
3. THE OIL GOES IN AT THE START AND IS NOT SKIMMED. Two hundred millilitres emulsifies with the starch from the potatoes into a broth that is almost creamy. Skimmed off as it rises, which looks tidy, the soup stays thin.
4. Small fish rinsed well. Gills removed -- they are bitter and they will be in the broth for an hour.
5. Into a wide pan with the onions, celery, half the oil and the water. Brought to a simmer and cooked 45 minutes.
6. Pushed through a coarse sieve, pressing hard, and the solids discarded. The broth returned to a clean pan.
7. Potatoes and carrots in, the rest of the oil, and simmered 20 minutes until the potato is nearly done. Shaken, not stirred.
8. Seasoned now -- the broth should be fully seasoned before the good fish goes in, because it cannot be stirred afterwards.
9. The firm fish pieces laid on top in one layer and pushed just under the surface.
10. Lid on, lowest heat, 8 MINUTES. The fish is done when it parts from the bone at a touch. Boiled, it shreds.
11. Heat off, the juice of one lemon poured over, and left 5 minutes.
12. Served in wide bowls with the fish and potato lifted in with a slotted spoon and the broth ladled round, the second lemon in wedges, and more raw oil over each bowl.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Greece · All recipes