Brodetto di Pesce (Fish Soup).
For some reason fish soup gets European folks afightin’ more than most dishes. It exists in some form in every Mediterranean city I’ve ever visited, and it’s always more alike than different, so what’s all the fuss? Like most of my recipes, this is a strategy versus a real recipe, so open a bottle of dry pink, pull down the big pot and leave the fighting to the others.
Non-oily fish.
Shell-fish
Tomatoes
White or pink wine
Onions
Garlic
Local variants. Fennel heads. Orange peels. Cinnamon sticks. Potatoes.
Good bread
Fresh herbs
You’re really building two soups here, a flavour-base (1), and then the final soup (2), which is another way of saying the best bits cooked in the flavour-base. The flavour base (1), is where you want to cook all the things you don’t intend to eat but still want to taste. If you have shrimp, peel them, and use the shells for (1) and then entire bodies, head on, for (2). Fresh herbs? Stems in (1), leaves in (2). Fennel? Diced bulb into (1), fronds with the other herbs into (2) And on.
Take your biggest, meanest and heaviest Dutch oven and get it smoking hot over your biggest hob or burner. Cut up a few onions a head, peel and crush the garlic (as always with the garlic, the smaller you cut it, the more you taste it in the end), the herbs, a little chilli peppers, the shrimp shells, all the spines and heads from the fish, etc, and glug in some oil and toss it all in. Cook it dark. It should be intoxicating right away. Keep it moving. When a good fond forms (those brown and black bits on the bottom of the pan, after about ten minutes), add some wine both to the pan, say a few cups, and to your glass, you’re going to need to stay hydrated for this one. Add a little water, until it looks like you have, say, a modest bowl of soup for everyone. This entire process should take about 15 minutes. Keep the fire high, you’re trying to get the olive oil and water to amalgamate. Stir hard and often. Carefully drain or filter out everything but the liquid. You don’t need cheese cloth or panty hose. Use your pasta strained and keep that glass full.
Bring back to a boil. Make sure your fish is all cut into bite-size pieces. But really look at your fish and shell-fish. Think about them, consider each. Clams take a long time to cook. Say 6 minutes. Mussels, say 2 or 3. Your flaky fish, maybe one. Shrimp? A minute as well. Set the table with big bowls for the dead soldiers and call everyone to the table. It won’t be long now. Eyeball which pieces will take the longest to cook, and then start tossing in the slowest ones. Build your soup conceptually in cooking times, so that each ingredient will be at its peak when you place the pot on the table. Lastly, add the mussels, and as they open, starting tasting for salt (mussels’ salinity mirror that of their sea or ocean, and can vary widely. They will provide a lot of the broth, and if it needs salt, or more chilli, add it now. Mediterranean mussels are often too salty as it is). When your mussels have opened and your shrimp has turned opaque, or even a few seconds before, toss in the herbs, add another good glug of raw oil, stir and place on the table. Instruct guests that they can lay toast slices on the bottom of the bowl as well, then ladle the rich stew over the top. Sip some wine and wonder why in hell you always thought fish stew took longer than 20 minutes?
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