Passport & Plate - Cioppino: A Shark's Tale
United Kingdom | Thursday, March 13, 2014 | 5 photos
Ingredients: Fish (cleaned, filleted, deboned and cut into 2cm chunks), 200 grams Monkfish, 300 grams Gurnard, 200 grams squid (if using full size squid cut smaller chunks), 6-8 clams per person (throw away any open or broken clams
Stock: 0.5 litres of shellfish/fish stock, 200 ml red wine, 200 ml white wine, Knob of butter, 1 dessertspoon of olive oil, Dash of balsamic vinegar
Dash of Fish sauce
1 large white onion chopped
6 cloves of garlic peeled and sliced or crushed
A stem of celery chopped (I threw in a little fennel too), Dessertspoon of tomato puree, 400 gram can of chopped tomatoes, 15 grams dried porcini mushrooms, Handful of fresh mushrooms, chopped,15 grams fresh parsley, roughly chopped, 10 grams fresh sage, roughly chopped, Good pinch of chilli flakes, Pinch of smoked paprika, A teaspoon of dried mixed Italian Herbs, Salt & cracked black pepper for seasoning
Garnish: I lemon quartered, Chopped parsley, Grated parmesan or pecorino (my personal favorite), Served with crusty Italian Ciabatta or French bread and a green salad.
Cioppino is a familiar fish stew in San Francisco but its roots are in Italy, most likely Genoa where ciuppin, a word in the Ligurian dialect meaning "to chop" or "chopped", is the name of a classic soup of the same name. The essence of the dish is about what is available. The key recipe is experimentation. A great recipe for cheaper fish and the beauty of this dish is that the soup base can be prepared in advance and kept refrigerated or frozen without the fish being added.I made this dish in London in early spring with gurnard, monkfish, squid and clams. I hold by the advice to use wine that you like to drink. In my case Italian Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio. Fresh sage and dried porcini, shitake and/or Portobello mushrooms give a meaty flavour that works for a cold weather dish. In the summer replace sage with oregano and use only fresh field mushrooms for a lighter taste.
How to prepare this recipe
Serves 4
Preparation & Cooking Time 1 hour
Firstly rehydrate the dried porcini mushrooms as directed. Typically they will need to stand for 20 minute. Melt the butter with the olive oil over a medium heat in a heavy based pot. Add the chopped onion, celery (and fennel) after a minute or two add the garlic, stirring and reducing the heat as necessary to avoid burning until the onion is translucent. Stir in the smoked paprika, the chilli flakes, dried herbs before adding the wine. Cook in the wine for a minute or two before adding the stock, the vinegar, fish sauce and the puree. The water from the hydrated porcini mushrooms can also be used to augment the stock. Mix well. Finally add the canned tomatoes, the rehydrated porcini mushrooms and the fresh mushrooms. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and stir ingredients together. Bring the sauce to a bubble and turn down to a low heat, cover to reduce for 20 minutes allowing the flavours to assimilate. At this point check for seasoning. Allow to simmer for a further 10 minutes. Now the base is ready for the fish to be added. As the fish does not take long to cook I choose not to add it until my guests have arrived. If you are not ready to add the fish, remove the sauce from the heat, it will just improve as it sits. Bring it back to simmering before adding the monkfish and the gurnard and cook for 6 minutes. Shake the pot rather than stir to avoid breaking up the meat. Add the squid and the clams, cover the pot and cook for a further 3 or 4 minutes when you will see the clams open.
Serve in warm bowls, garnished with chopped parsley, a quarter or lemon, grated pecorino and plenty of warm crusty bread for mopping up the sauces. You will need some empty bowls on the table for shells, finger bowls and napkins too. Unopened clams should be discarded. Drink with wine of your choice.
The story behind this recipe: I was introduced to Cioppino in Mexico. We had been fishing for days, trawling lines behind the boat, setting out in the dinghy crowded with rods, reels, lures, a farrago of bait and eternal optimism. Either the Sea of Cortez was empty or we were lousy fishermen. On the scale of things I was holding out for the latter and was highly excited by our miniscule catch of diminutive Grouper and bullet scaled Triggerfish.
Later we are in a cruising groove; enjoying the nudge of a rare breeze and clear blue skies when startled by the high pitch whirr of the running line. Whatever we had was giving us a run for our money. We imagine juicy tuna for tea. As the game plays out the fish gets closer, we are not prepared for the Mako shark on the end of the line. A relative of the Great White and one of the fastest species of shark this guy is irritated and irritable, ducking and diving to get off the line. Not a fish I want to have on deck. While we hover in the space of indecision - cut the line or save our best lure - our friend sears the line with a final surge of power and is gone. Not long afterwards we haul in a Humboldt squid. It is huge, far too much food for just two of us. It too escapes on the cusp of capture with a last gasp expellation of air and water. Eventually it is when we are walking on the sun baked shore of a deserted channel island that our catch comes in; a symphony of squid senselessly beaching themselves on the shoreline to the delight of a bevy of rapacious gulls. We attempt to guide them back to safety but in the end accept what the sea is offering up.
Back on the boat we marry the richness of squid with the meagre collection of frozen reef fish, red wine, canned tomatoes and herbs from stock provisions with the meatiness of home dried porcini mushrooms to create the most delicious of Cioppinos; a feast we extend to other seafarers as our squid supplies go on and on eventually becoming the bait that turns our fishing fortunes around.
