Oaxacan · Soup
Caldo de Piedra
- Advanced
- 25 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with a warm current of chile, acid holding everything up to the light, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 4 dense dry river stones, fist sized, granite or basalt
- 600 g mojarra or other firm river fish, filleted and cut in 3 cm pieces
- 300 g raw prawns, shelled
- 1.2 L cold water or light fish broth
- 300 g ripe tomatoes, chopped
- 100 g white onion, chopped fine
- 20 g garlic, chopped
- 2 chiles de agua, or 4 serranos, sliced
- 6 sprigs epazote
- 1 small bunch coriander, chopped
- 2 limes
- fine salt
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: fish · shellfish
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
- Build a wood fire and bury the stones in the embers, bringing them up slowly over an hour or more until they glow dull red.
- While they heat, divide the raw fish, prawns, tomato, onion, garlic, chilli, epazote and coriander between four deep jícaras or thick clay bowls and season them.
- Pour 300 ml of the cold water into each bowl so the solids are just covered.
- Lift a stone with tongs, knock the ash off and lower it in: the bowl erupts and boils hard for 30-40 seconds, then falls back to a rolling simmer.
- Take the stone out when the boiling stops, check the fish has turned opaque and flakes under a fork, and serve with lime.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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