Cioppino seafood stew.
For four people for like a regular weeknight meal,
I buy a pound and a half of mussels
and ask your fishmonger or the man working the fish counter
if they can clean and debeard them.
Otherwise, I give 'em a good scrub at home
with a nail brush and let them soak in fresh water,
change the water, let 'em soak again, drain them off.
Keep them icy cold and always buy your seafood
as close to the day you're going to use it as is possible.
I have medium to large size,
whatever has a great price on it, shrimp,
deveined and peeled and tails off
and I have about a pound of crab
then any sort of white sustainable fish, sturdy.
This is halibut and I portion six ounces per adult.
I took, to me the main ingredient,
I just want the garlic bread for all the juice,
sourdough bread, cut it into giant chunks.
These are called croutons
only because we're gonna toast them.
They're giant hunks of bread.
They're gonna sop up all that delicious flavor
and I melt a stick of butter and some olive oil together
with a big piece of lemon peel and tons of crushed garlic
and then I pour that infused lemon,
oh and I throw in some fresh thyme too.
I throw the garlic and the thyme and the lemon all in there
and then I pour all that great flavor
down over the giant croutons.
Toss it together
and then put it on a big old baking sheet
and throw it in the oven
so it just tastes like garlic bread.
I am so happy with that.
Goldie, come put this in the oven for me, thank you.
In a big pot with a tight fitting lid,
I have our firmer vegetables cooking out.
Onion.
Fennel.
Sweet, licoricey fennel goes beautifully with onion
and celery.
Once that starts to sweat and give off its juices
then I add some leek, a couple of fat bay leaves,
I season it up with fennel seed or fennel pollen or both,
crushed red pepper flaked for a little spice
and a little oregano or marjoram.
Always lightly crushing our dried herbs in our palm
to kind of wake them up
and then lots and lots of thinly sliced garlic
which I use this funny little tool
which is actually a truffle shaver
to get that garlic nice and thin.
Let that cook together
then we're going to deglaze with a bit of white vermouth
which is fortified wine then we're going to add in
about a half a bottle of white wine.
You can use seafood stock, chicken stock, bone stock,
Stock-in-a-Box.
This is a beautiful bone brodo
then I add passata which is puree of tomato.
This is just fresh tomato puree and some San Marzano tomato.
Crushed, diced, whole, crushed with your hands.
Doesn't matter.
So I use an immersion blender to puree mine
which is what we have here.
So to the one that's bubbling away here,
I'm going to add in all of our seafood,
our mussels, crab, shrimp and then I nest the fish on top
and when the fish turns opaque and white and firm,
you're good to go.
Pop the lid on.
You put a hunk or a couple of hunks
of the giant sourdough garlic bread croutons
and you can see through the top here
that our white fish, halibut, has turned opaque.
It's nice and white
and you can see that the mussels have opened.
So now we're ready to finish the dish and serve.
We have our lemon.
Squeeze it cut side up
so that the seeds stay with the lemon,
don't fall into your cioppino
and just start working the bowl
and arranging your seafood and your broth over the bread.
Crazy.
I love this dish.
We try and take a spatula
and get the fish to stay together real pretty up on top
and then I top that with the fennel fronds,
the leafy tops from the fennel
and a little flat-leaf parsley.
(applause)