Cocoa
Description
The soup is simple and quick to prepare. Soups in Greece and Crete are quite rare. And no wonder: with nine months of heat each year, hot soups are hardly appealing. In fact, Cretan cuisine lacks a soup-eating culture altogether, and most taverns don't even have a soup section on their menus. Nevertheless, there are a few signature soups that, although prepared infrequently, are made with precision. One of them is Kakavia, which is essentially fish soup. The preparation and serving methods are particularly interesting. The cooking technique is quite simple and accessible, and the ingredients are readily available even in Russia (who in Moscow isn't familiar with sea fish these days?), so you can easily make this Kakavia soup at home without any difficulty. Give it a try—you'll surely enjoy it :) Ladle into bowls and serve.
Instructions
- 1
Step 1
Actually, the photo shows all the ingredients we need. A simple set, isn't it?
- 2
Step 2
Finely chop the onion.
- 3
Step 3
Fry in olive oil until golden brown.
- 4
Step 4
Peel the potatoes and cut them into 4 longitudinal pieces.
- 5
Step 5
Add the potatoes to the pan with the onion and, stirring, fry for another 10 minutes.
- 6
Step 6
We gut and clean the fish (without cutting off the heads) and cut it into pieces.
- 7
Step 7
Place the pieces of fish into the pot where the onion and potatoes were sautéed.
- 8
Step 8
Pour water into a saucepan (approximately 5 cups). Salt and pepper to taste.
- 9
Step 9
Boil the soup over high heat without a lid for about 20-25 minutes. Continuously skim off the foam.
- 10
Step 10
Squeeze the juice from half a lemon.
- 11
Step 11
When the soup is almost ready, remove it from the heat, add lemon juice, cover with a lid, and let it steep for 10–15 minutes. Serve kakavia as follows: broth separately, fish and vegetables separately. There's no need to strain the broth—simply use a slotted spoon to remove the fish and potatoes and transfer them to a plate.