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Chilean · Soup

Caldillo de Congrio

  • Intermediate
  • 40 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost

rich · gently hot · bright · herb-fresh Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a warm current of chile, lifted green at the very end.

Ingredients

  • 1.2 kg conger eel, cut into 4 thick steaks, head and bones kept
  • 1 onion halved, plus 2 onions sliced
  • 1 carrot, sliced
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 200 ml dry white wine
  • 1.2 litres water
  • 600 g potatoes, cut in 1 cm slices
  • 3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
  • 1 red pepper, sliced
  • 60 ml olive oil
  • 1 tbsp ají de color
  • 100 ml double cream
  • a handful of coriander leaves
  • salt and black pepper

The skills inside

Frying the paste until the oil splitsThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilStraining & passing through a sieveSkimming: foam, fat and a clear broth

Allergen screen

Found: dairy · fish · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Simmer the head and bones with the halved onion, carrot, bay, wine and water for 25 minutes, skimming the grey foam, then strain; the broth should be clear and faintly sticky on the lips. 25 min
  2. Soften the sliced onion and pepper in the oil, stir in the ají de color and the tomato and cook until the oil separates out red at the edges.
  3. Add the potato slices and the strained broth and simmer until they are just yielding but not breaking.
  4. Slide in the fish steaks, drop the heat until the surface only shivers at about 80 C (176 F), and poach 8 minutes, until the flesh parts cleanly from the central bone. 8 min
  5. Stir the cream into the broth at the side of the pot rather than over the fish, season, and scatter the coriander.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes

  • It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
  • The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
  • Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
  • The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
  • Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.

Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

  • It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
  • The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
  • The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
  • The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
  • Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.

At the Table

The Pour
Vermentino or Sauvignon Blanc
Also Right
Albariño
From the Taps
Witbier
Zero-Proof
Sparkling water with citrus

Lean fish, bright acid, done: coastal whites built beside the same boats; the fresher the fish, the leaner the pour.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Caldillo de Congrio The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Chilean kitchen