Let me introduce you to Fish Soup

I get quite home sick if I don’t get to travel back home for more than 2 years. By home I mean Poland in general. There are places there that I have to re-visit on regular basis or something in me feels incomplete.

Bar Przystan in Sopot is one of them. Sopot is up north, right on the Baltic Sea and it’s famous for all the beautiful fish you get to eat there. Fish so fresh that you would literally see the fishermans boats on the shore in front of bar Przystan. Freshly caught, freshly smoked, freshly minced into a fish sausage – yes! Ah, Poland!

Back to Bar Przystan though… imagine me, 19 years old, travelling through Poland on my frequent hitch hiking trips, I found this place along a beach side walk just out of town. Being slightly obsessed with anything soup, I went straight for Zupa Rybaka (fish soup) and I was instantly hooked. I never had a fish soup before, never heard of it. The region I come from (South) doesn’t have fish soup, even Warsaw – the capital city didn’t have it. I used to go on a day trip (4-5h one way!) from Warsaw to Sopot just to eat that soup!

It’s that good.

This used to be my secret spot. Just a regular bar on the Seaside with incredibly tasty soup, that’s all. The secret is out now. Bar Przystan is on top of Tripadvisor’s list of places to visit when in Poland. You’d be lucky to go there and avoid the queue. The soup is still as ridiculously good as I remember.

Things are tougher now that I live in Australia. I’d still jump on a 30h flight just to go and eat there in a heartbeat! This is not quite possible right now, so while I wait for the world to get back to normal, I work on trying to recreate that soup at home. I’m not quite there yet, but pretty close!

Here’s my recipe if you wish to try making it yourself.

ZUPA RYBAKA

0.5kg fish fillet (I mix cod, salmon and monkfish)

1 carrot

1 parsnip

1 leek

¼ celeriac

½ onion

1 tomato

1 tbl spoon of tomato paste

marjoram

1.5L vegetable bullion

salt

pepper

turmeric

Cut the onion and leek finely and sautee for 3 minutes in one spoon of oil and one spoon of butter. Grate the carrot, parsnip and celeriac on the bigger side and add to onion and leek. Add some salt and pepper, mix, cook for further 5 mins.

Cut fish into 3cm chunks, salt and dust in flour.

Add bullion to the veggies, add some bay leaf, all spice, turmeric, marjoram, tomato paste and fresh tomato (make sure the fresh tomato is peeled – to do that you need to blanch it with boiling hot water first) and cook on a low heat for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, fry the fish in a shallow pan on medium heat, 2-3 minutes on each side. Once done, add to the soup. Taste. Season further with salt and pepper to your liking. At this stage, I like to squeeze half a lemon in there too, just because I like sourness and acidic foods, you might not like that. Serve with fresh parsley on top. YUM !