- What is up, you guys? Chef Billy Parisi here
from BillyParisi.com. You are not gonna wanna miss today, because I am making an
authentic Italian recipe that was founded right
here in the United States, San Francisco, California. And it's called cioppino. I actually used to make
cioppino at a restaurant that I used to work at
way back in the day. I was a sous-chef at this place. And really, there it was
this sort of seafood stew that we would serve up with rice. It was absolutely delicious. But you know me. You know I'm on this journey to kind of find the authenticity
of some of these recipes, keeping them as traditional as possible. And when I researched cioppino and spent a few days doing it, reading in some old books that I had, searching the internet, looking at all these different recipes, and a lot of the things that I found were that the recipes that you may see now aren't the ones that
were actually being used way back in the day
when they were created. I've seen things like fennel being used or carrots or all these
additional ingredients that are delicious, that can
make a cioppino delicious, but if you think about it,
when these recipes were created in the mid 1800s, we
weren't a rich country or a rich world kind of like we are now. We used what we had. A lot of these things were
peasant food, peasant recipes. And no disrespect, it
just what was going on. So they used what they had. They used what was in season and tried to create something
extremely delicious. Well cioppino, which was really invented by some Italian folks in San Francisco, and, well, rumor has it
the Fisherman's Wharf, which is famous these days. And really it was about
what came in that day. What was the fresh seafood
that came off the boat that they could use in a
stew that could feed people? Simple, delicious, what was available, that is the theme that I keep finding with all of these old traditional recipes that I'm digging up to try to help preserve
the authenticity of them. And I'm having a ton of fun doing it. It starts with this cioppino,
which actually translates to chopped in and comes from a region in the northwest part
of Italy known as Genoa, which it just means chopped
in, like chopped up ingredients to make this stew. So let's not waste anymore
time and get to it. Go ahead and head over
to your cutting board. I've got a few different
ingredients that I chopped up to go into this stew. I'm just gonna add them to a sheet tray or a regular tray in general. Head over to the cooktop. I've got an extremely large pot. Over medium heat, the
first thing we're gonna do is add in some olive oil. (upbeat music) Next, we're gonna hit it
with some diced onions (upbeat music) followed up by adding in some garlic, (upbeat music) some celery, some green bell peppers, and then some red bell peppers. Most of the traditional recipes I found just had green bell peppers,
so I hate to mix this up and not keep it super authentic, but, man, I hate green peppers. They don't taste like anything to me. So I thought the addition
of a red bell pepper might just enhance the flavor a tad bit. But what we're gonna do is
saute these vegetables up, but we've got some work to do. Go back over to your cutting board. I've got some canned
whole peeled tomatoes. You want to use these
whole peeled Roma tomatoes. You can find them from San Marzano. Even better, there's a
lot more flavor in there. And I like to crush them
up just like I've done with the chicken cacciatore
recipe I made a little bit ago. Squeeze 'em, kinda just tear
them apart a little bit. And then at that point let's head back over to the cooktop. Let's take a look at our vegetables. Make sure they're looking pretty and very, very lightly browned, they are. What I wanna do now is
add in some fish stock. You can absolutely deglaze with white wine if you wanna help elevate this
recipe and make it your own. I found some fish stock
from a local fishmonger. You can maybe find it from a
grocery store, it's awesome. You can also substitute with clam juice. Next, we're gonna add in those tomatoes. And what we wanna do is simply stew all of these delicious
ingredients together. Now while this is stewing,
I've got a large pot of water. What I'm gonna do is just
place it over that burner and get it to a boil. Now head over to your cutting board. Let's have a look at the
seafood that we've got. Now when I was doing my research, the themes that I kept
seeing were shellfish and, in addition, squid. I didn't see halibut or sea bass, but you can absolutely use those things. I don't want to stop you
here because it's just bonus. Remember that cioppino was
founded on the catch of the day, so this recipe may change
day to day or week to week depending on what came in. So there may be some times
where sea bass or halibut found its way into a cioppino recipe. But the overall classic nature of it was primarily shellfish. So what I've got here are some squid. We've got some clams. (upbeat music) Got some mussels. (upbeat music) I've got some crab. Traditionally it is Dungeness crab. You're gonna be hard-pressed
to find that right now, so king crab will be fine. And then last, but not
least, I've got some shrimp or some prawns if you'd like. Let's head back over to the cooktop. Let's have a look at our cioppino stew. It looks, smells amazing. What we're gonna do at
this point is season it up with sea salt and pepper. Get all those flavors infused
and get it tasting good. Head over to that pot. And what we wanna do here is
batch-cook these ingredients, these seafood ingredients,
by what takes longest to what takes the shortest
amount of time to cook. So let's go ahead and
first add in some clams. We're gonna wait three to four minutes before adding in some fresh mussels. Make sure that beard is
removed on those mussels. I added in quite a bit here. I probably will not put
this all into the cioppino. I probably will reserve some to the side. Cook these for three to four more minutes. Now drain all of these. Add it right to our cioppino tomato stew. Give it a few tosses. Looks amazing and smells
so good in here, seriously. Head back over to that
boiling pot of water. What we're gonna add
in first is the shrimp, (upbeat music)
the crab, (upbeat music) the squid, it only takes a
minute or two to cook that. After about three to four minutes total, let's go ahead and go
back over to that big pot. Add these in. You can see (chuckling)
it's kind of overflowing. You may need to add a
little bit more water just to keep it down. Give it lots of tosses. Get all those wonderful
seafood flavors incorporated into the stew. Let it cook for about three
to four minutes on low heat. And now head back over
to your cutting board, because it's time to serve this beauty up. (upbeat music) Using a ladle, add some of the stew into a bowl or a small pot,
whatever you wanna eat from, totally up to you. Simply garnish with some
fresh chopped parsley. If you want, you can add some crushed red pepper
flakes at this point. And boom, we are finished. Because we eat with our eyes, I have to say this looks
absolutely gorgeous, you guys. You are gonna love making this. Yes, it can be a little bit expensive 'cause you have so much
shellfish going on. But the recipe's incredibly easy to make. And again, this can change depending on what you have available. So maybe you only have mussels and clams. That's all you've got, great, make it. Use the other parts of this recipe to make your own cioppino. That was really the idea
and premise of cioppino. What do you got available? What's in season? Let's not waste any time,
I wanna eat some of this. (upbeat music) Broth is incredible, oh, my gosh! Dude, oh, man, that's so good! I don't know what else to say. But I definitely don't
wanna chew on camera so you have to hear this
annoying chew that I'm doing. Come back next week. We're gonna hook it up. See you all later. (upbeat music)
