spicy fish soup

I've made this fish soup about four or five times in the past six weeks. It's delicious, easy, and perfect for summer (tomatoes!), but it also offers an excellent opportunity to show you how you can take some shortcuts on an "official" recipe to make it slightly less complicated to shop for and make.

Let's start with the fish. No need to buy four types of seafood or go to Whole Paycheck's fish counter. I get Trader Joe's frozen White Ruffy, which is a mild-flavored, slightly flaky fish, but it still holds its shape well enough to work well in the soup. Plus it's easy to break off one fillet, so you can make a small batch of soup at a time--great if you live on your own, since you don't really want to have fishy things sitting around in your fridge for too long. And it defrosts fast too. (I know you're not supposed to defrost fish under hot water, but whatevs, I've been doing it for years.)

Second, the tomatoes. In tomato season I use whatever I get from the farmers' market, and I certainly don't bother to peel them. In non-tomato season, it's all about the canned stuff.

Parsley: I never have this around so I don't bother. I do have a rosemary plant however, and you should too, since the prices stores charge for fresh herbs are ridick.

White wine: Surely you have a bottle open already. If not, why not? Wine makes life better. In a pinch, you could use dry vermouth.

The one thing I do do to make this slightly more complicated is that instead of adding plain water, I typically use some homemade broth stashed in the freezer. But this is easy too--it just requires some forethought. For the first few batches, I used shrimp broth I made months and months ago with shrimp shells left over from another dish. Then I ran out of shrimp broth, but I still didn't want to use plain water. Luckily I had some vegetable broth in there too, which I made a while ago by boiling whatever vegetables hanging out in the crisper that were not yet moldy but had passed their prime.  I spiked with a few drops of fish sauce. Delicious.

So that's it. Totally easy, yummy, and healthy too. If you don't like spicy, you can cut out the red pepper, but frankly I think it makes the dish.