Creamy Finnish salmon and prawn soup with dill and sour cream

This is one of my mum's recipes. Fish soup is a popular everyday food in Scandinavia and there are many versions. I'm not a huge fan of all of them, I remember the horrible burbot soup with the slimy fish that a friend of dad's, an avid fisherman, used to bring us. Just seeing him walking up the path to the house with the ominous looking plastic bag in hand would send shivers down our spines. The soup wasn't improved by mum using all the bits like the skin, bones and head to add taste to the stock and not always getting them all out before serving.

And the regular school lunch, a soup of grey frozen saithe that somehow managed to taste bland and bitter at the same time - not my favourite.

This soup is a totally different animal, creamy and mellow. No bones, skin or eyeballs, just tender cubes of salmon and pink prawns. You can leave the prawns out to keep it super simple, it is lovely without them also.

I think the key is the sour cream, you don't need much of it, so this really is a very healthy dish. But a couple of tablespoons of sour cream will transform it. And a knob of butter is not going to hurt. I left it out just to keep it healthy.

It's best served piping hot with toasted sourdough rye bread slices, but if you're not into sourdough, have a nice warm home-made crusty roll.

Recipe: Salmon and prawn soup with dill and sour cream (serves 2)

4 large potatoes or 8-10 new potatoes
3 shallots or 1 small yellow onion
2 cups of fish stock
lemon pepper
2-3 tbsp fresh dill
2-3 fillets of salmon (about 250g)
12 raw king prawns
2 tbsp sour cream (or more if you want to be decadent)
1 tbsp butter (optional)
dill for garnish

Cut the potatoes into about 2 cm chunks. Chop the onion. Place the potatoes and onion in a pan with the fish stock, lemon pepper and chopped dill. Cook until potatoes are soft.

While potatoes are cooking cut the salmon to 2cm pieces and devein the prawns. Once potatos are done add the fish, prawns and sour cream and cook gently until the salmon and prawns are done. This should only take a couple of minutes. Check the seasoning, garnish with fresh dill and serve with toasted sour dough rye bread.