Bisque, broth, stock, soup, whatever: shrimp (fill in the blank)

Now, you're probably thinking something along the lines of "she's more cryptic than usual," or, more politiely "HUH?" Well, sort of like some (most) of James Joyce's writings, the explanations become clearer as you go forward.
Last week, I read a recipe for a shrimp bisque. It sounded really really good, and I began thinking "what is a bisque?" Honestly, I am not sure. I realized that the only "bisque" I know is lobster bisque, an involved, laborious recipe, which requires many lobster shells, much cracking of said shells, and slow cooking of them, with vegetables and herbs, to get a reduction that you then combine with everything BUT lobster meat. At the end, if you're feeling fancy, you add some lobster as a garnish.
When this is served on a menu, I have seen people positively swoon. It is not, however, my cup of soup. Or bisque. Annalena, as she explained last night at dinner, is a rather cheap date. No lobster for me. Or white truffles. or chocolate. Which may sound like it makes it impossible to produce a seductive valentine's dinner. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Bring me some pasta with cream sauce and mushrooms. Or a bowl of pasta fagioli (ok, ok, I know: beans are not exactly the food of love). Or, black truffles (the cheaper ones). Or a big bar of white chocolate almond bark. See where I'm going ? Well, I don't. No, I do. The point is: seduction is a relative term, especially when you're working with food.

Now, as I have clearly digressed way past where I started, let's get back to the matter at hand: the shrimp bisque. The recipe discussed how the author had used the shells of shrimp to make a broth. This sounded good to me. I have done this before: boiling shrimp shells to create a pale pink liquid that I then used to make risotto. What was intriguing to me about this recipe is that the shells were cooked in butter, finished with wine and brandy, and then used to make a broth. Now, even if there were no shells, anything that combines butter, wine and brandy is going to get a second look from Annalena. I mean, can you blame me?

So, looking for a soup this week, I decided this was the one, and ordered 2 pounds of wild , never frozen shrimp from my online grocer. I assumed that if they were wild and unfrozen, they would be in their shells, and I allocated extra time for when they arrived.

The 2 pounds of shrimp came in the grocery delivery, beautifully packaged, fresh as can be, and without their shells.
HUH? Lesson one today, ragazzi ; READ THE LABELS. I went back and saw that, yes, they very proudly discussed how they had reduced the work for their customers by taking off the shells. Great. Without shells, no bisque.

Ah, but the resourceful cook figures things out. And uses what s/he has on hand. And I did. So here we go. Let's make some shrimp soup. We won't call it bisque, but if you want to make the bisque, go look up Mark Bittman on the NY Times web page, and find it. It sounds good.

The original recipe called for sauteeing the shells with the butter and then finishing them with wine and brandy. Well, I knew I would need the flavor, so I instead did that with the vegetable base. For the base, you need two ribs of celery chopped roughly, 2 leeks, cleaned and also chopped roughly (light green and white parts, only, please), a fennel bulb, without the fronts, also so treated. Combine these with a few sprigs of thyme , a bayleaf or two, and 2 chopped cloves of garlic. Heat up three tablespoons of butter in a big soup pot, and add the vegetables. Cook them at medium heat until they sweat and begin to soften: no more than about 8 minutes, and then add , say , a big teaspoon of salt. Now, pour a cup of white wine into this (I omitted the brandy. I think it was a good decision). Boil off the wine until it's gone, and then add 2 cups of clam juice, 6 cups of water, and let the mess simmer for a quarter of an hour. (Lesson from the kitchen: bottles look the same: read the label. I almost added 2 cups of key lime juice to this soup). Then, add a quarter cup of uncooked, long grain rice a big suqirt of tomato paste, and let this all cook for twenty minutes.

While that is happening, add another tablespoon of butter to a pan, and when it's melted, add a pound of shelled shrimp. Saute' those. It won't take more than about five minutes to get them pink. Save them to the side, until the soup mix is finished cooking. You can tell by tasting the rice, and seeing if it's done.

Add the shrimp to the soup. You COULD serve this now. If you plan to do so, maybe you should chop up the shrimp before you add them. But... if you let the mix cool, and then pulse it in your blender, you get this absolutely wonderful, lightly pale pink, chunky dish . If you taste it right away, you will feel like the tomato is overpowering it. If you let it sit for about an hour, the tomato mellows, and the shrimp flavor comes out, and you will be very happy.

This will make you two quarts of soup. It ain't a soup free of fat, from all that butter . Incidentaly, in reading some posts by Faith Willinger, I am willing to bet that this will work with extra virgin olive oil. She just modified a recipe for whole wheat muffins by making the substitution, and that is on my "to do " list. I'll let you know.

I betcha you could substitute scallops or some firm white fish for this recipe, or mix things up a little. It tastes very sweet, but in a savory kind of way, you know what I mean? And if you're STILL looking for that valentine's day starter, and lobster bisque scares you as much as it scares me... here you go.

Or, just make it for a nice dinner with something after it. Shellfish are supposed to act as aphrodisiacs. Annalena will NOT describe why that is the case in this entry. Look it up, sweet ones, and have a lovely day of hearts and flowers.