01012011 - 3 Course New Year Eve's Dinner with Friends - Shrimps Bisque

2010 was a good year for us, Johan graduated and got a job almost immediately, I was blessed with a PhD position, we got a new puppy and we thought what better way to celebrate than have a nice 3-course dinner at our place with friends. So here's the menu we presented last night:

Starter

Shrimp Bisque

Main Course

Beef Wellington

Mash Potatoes with a dash of truffle oil 

Stir-Fried Haricot Verts & Carrots

Dessert

Lemon Fool

And we'll start off with the recipe for the Shrimp Bisque, which I got out of a weekly advertisement from Coop Forum, a supermarket chain here. I adapted the recipe a bit, with some other tips I picked up from websites, and also tripled the portion since there were 12 of us last night. This is made from frozen Artic Shrimps, which has lotsa of roe but after peeling, there are not much meat. However, it's really sweet and tasty and you can eat them fresh without cooking them and I liked this soup quite a bit, I think it will be equally good with fresh or tiger prawns.

Ingredients (Serves 4)
2 tablespoon butter
50g chopped shallots
2 cloves of garlic
100g celeriac, chopped
1 tablespoon tomato puree
400ml water
150ml white wine

500g shrimps, shelled but save the shells
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 turns of freshly ground black pepper
150ml thick cream
garnish with shelled prawns and parsley

Steps

1. Heat up the 2 tablespoon of butter in a pot and sweat the shallots and celeriac over medium heat until slight soft before adding the tomato puree to stir well together.
   
   
   
   Chopped onions, garlic and celeriac
2. Add the water and the wine and let it simmer while you prepare the shrimps. Save the shells and a few nicer shrimps for garnishing.
   
   
   
3. In a separate pan, heat up the 1 tablespoon of butter over a hot pan and add in the shells, salt and pepper and cook for about 5 minutes. Add it to the soup stock and season with salt and pepper and continue letting simmer for about 15-20 minutes.
   
   
   
4. At this point, you can choose to finely chop the remaining shrimps or leave them whole to add to the soup. If you decide to blend them, just remember the consistency will be like of a chunky soup, instead of smooth like pumpkin soup. Add some stock to help the blending.
   
   
   
5. Sieve the stock and get rid of the solids. Pour the stock back to the pot with the shrimps and add in the cream, season with salt and pepper to taste.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Garnish with prawns and parsley, and some shrimp roe if you have any and serve hot.