How to Make Monterey Bay Cioppino

[Music] chipita was born right on the wharf in san francisco and it was simply a way to use up the leftovers from the day's catch a little of this and a little that got thrown into a pot of simmering tomato sauce and dinner was served so it's no surprise that there are lots of versions of this recipe out there isn't that right that's right i had my own unique experience with the seafood stew at phil's fish market in eatery in monterey bay california phil walked me through his own version of his sicilian inflected chipino and it all begins with the marinara okay so i have three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil heating up over medium heat until shimmering i'm going to add one large onion that's been thinly sliced three garlic cloves that are also thinly sliced three quarters of a teaspoon of table salt and i'm just gonna cook this until the onion begins to soften and just begins to brown around the edges and that'll take about eight minutes smells good right it does so the day i ended up at phil's fish market it happened to coincide with the open house for the monterey bay aquarium there was a rodeo in town and there was some event at the motor speedway so there was literally like 3 000 people descending on this massive restaurant there's concrete floors there's a fish market just bustling and it was super loud and crazy but everything including the chipino was fantastic it's been about eight minutes and these onions are just softened so we're going to add one 15 ounce can of tomato sauce as you know tomato sauce comes with a little bit of seasoning already in it a little sugar salt spices herbs so we're getting a big boost of flavor right off the bat we don't have a lot of time to simmer the sauce for hours and hours to develop flavor so a little cheat like that goes a long way then we have one cup of tomato puree this is mostly to reinforce that tomato flavor and give a little bit of body to the marinara on top of that we're going to do a half cup of chopped fresh basil into the simmering pot into the simmering pot phil uses basil pretty liberally with this chipino the basil really imparts a nice flavor throughout the sauce now a tablespoon of light brown sugar so it's not unusual to add sugar to marinara sauces to take the acidic edge off those tomatoes but brown sugar a little unusual i haven't seen that before right now this is an ingredient i've never seen before one and a half teaspoons of worcestershire sauce that adds a good shot of umami to the sauce a nice savoriness okay and this one i think is really based on those sicilian roots it's a quarter teaspoon of ground cinnamon which i have never seen in my life but trust me it really works well here it really complements the seafood it changes the flavor of this marinara from something that you're used to putting on pasta it's just something that's a little bit different and actually welcomes in the seafood all right so cinnamon and which to sheer right so we're going to bring this to a boil then reduce the heat to medium low and let it simmer until it's slightly thickened and that takes about 10 minutes [Music] it's been 10 minutes and i really want you to try this unique sauce so a little spoon for you here thank you and we could just go ahead and get in there i want you to notice that cinnamon i don't think you could not notice it but it doesn't taste like hey there's cinnamon in here it's just got a really unique flavor to it it does okay so we're going to shut off the sauce and we're just going to set it aside and now let's talk about the seafood we're going to be using cod scallops shrimp and mussels all easy to find anywhere in the country that's right so let's start with the cod fillets i have one and a half pounds of cod now you could substitute sea bass snapper hay caliber any of those fish that are firm white flesh fish but you want them to be at least an inch to an inch and a half thick because we're going to cut this into one and a half inch chunks here and we want those chunks to cook at the same rate as the rest of the seafood next we're going to talk about the scallops these are 10 20 dry packed scallops that means there's 10 to 20 of them per pound dry pack means they're not treated with any chemical to enhance their water content scallops often come with a little tendon on the side here you want to just peel that off and discard that so these scallops are normally about an inch an inch and a half thick we want to cut those in half right at the equator here so we can make little water chestnut size pieces and that's 12 ounces of scallops and we also have 12 ounces of shrimp and we want to peel and devein those and then remove the tails so you could peel into vein your shrimp any way you like the way i like to do it is taking a paring knife inverting it so the blade is up and i just kind of wiggle the knife and move the shrimp around the blade not forcing the blade through the shrimp okay and then you could peel off all of this shell and then as you get to the tail the trick here is to just give it a little bit of a squeeze and then it'll pop right off and then if you see any of the vein that's in there just use the blade of your knife to remove it so these are 2125 shrimp meaning there's 21 to 25 per pound and those are classified in the neighborhood of extra-large shrimp all right so our shrimp are cleaned and now we're going to season our fish with salt and pepper okay we'll just give those a light toss on here i want to keep all the individual groups of seafood separate because we're going to add them at different times into the pot so that's all set and ready to go and then the last thing we need to take care of here are the muscles we have one pound of muscles a lot of times i will go through and just give them a quick rinse under cold running water just to remove any sand that might be on the surface of the shelves and you really want to look for two things one to make sure if you have any muscles that are open if you give them a little bang on the counter that they close up nicely that means they're still alive if they don't close up get rid of them and then you also want to look for any beards these are the little furry pieces that come out of the side of the muscle and this is how they attach themselves to the rope or the rock where they grow so if you see the beard just give it a little tug and remove it so then we'll continue to take the beards off the rest of these mussels and then we'll get to [Music] cooking we have three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil heating over medium-high heat and you can see that it's just now starting to shimmer so to that we're going to add our mussels another half cup of chopped basil one quarter cup of dried sherry now you could use some kind of a moscato or a birch demeanor we like the taste of the sherry okay and three cloves of minced garlic one teaspoon of worcestershire sauce and then a crumbled half teaspoon of saffron which is classic in any chipino and then finally one half teaspoon of table salt we're just going to stir that to combine all these ingredients we're going to cover for two minutes and let those mussels just begin to pop open it's been two minutes and you can see that our mussels have just started to pop open and that's perfect so we're gonna add two eight ounce bottles of clam juice and our wonderful marinara that we made earlier you know i was thinking that marinara was looking a little thick to be the base of a stew but now that i see you're loosening it up with clam juice it makes sense remember a lot of liquid is going to come out of that seafood as well so let's stir this together to combine it okay now we're ready to start adding our seafood all right we're going to add the cod and the scallops first and the idea is that we stagger the seafood so all the pieces come up done just at the same time we're going to push the cod just below the surface and remember there's going to be some liquid that comes out of the cod and i like to keep it so i can see just the top of it nice and attractive for the presentation all right and then next we're going to be adding the scallops and you can just drop those all over the stew in any place you see an opening now from this point on we are not going to stir the stew because then we risk breaking up the fish and we don't want to do that we want to have nice big chunks of seafood to serve so we have all of our scallops in there all right you can see that it's coming up to a boil we want to cover it reduce the heat to medium and let that simmer for two minutes it's been two minutes and you can see the seafood is starting to look just opaque so we're going to add the remaining seafood there okay shrimp let's put it anywhere you see an opening it is a very bare simmer though huh yeah again we're just trying to slowly bring all the seafood up i will use the spoon just to push the shrimp below the surface of the liquid okay so that shrimp is nestled in there nicely we're gonna cover it and let this seafood continue to simmer for another three minutes then we're going to remove it from the heat and let it steep off the heat for five minutes to let all the seafood come up to temperature together all right so that gentle finish means you won't overcook it exactly [Music] julia you've been very patient i have been it's time to take a peek at archipino oh that smells good and the thing to notice here is that everything is just barely cooked through and that's going to mean it's very tender and still has a lot of moisture to it crouton for you yeah a little wedge lemon i'm driving later so i'm going to say lemon i would do a little bit i just want to taste this broth the seafood looks amazing first up the broth it just has so much flavor let's try some cod perfectly cooked and try the shrimp shrimp is the biggest test of doneness you know because when the shrimp are overcooked they can be really chewy [Music] they're so tender the seafood really is the star of this show yeah the basil works so well with the seafood brian this is amazing thank you so much so if you want to make this elegant but simple seafood stew start by making a fragrant tomato sauce after cleaning and cutting up a variety of seafood into bite-sized pieces add them to the pot in stages finally let the seafood finish cooking off the heat and serve with slices of hearty bread and wedges of lemon from cook's country an easy and impressive recipe for monterey bay cipino i can't wait to get my hands on this bread it's been soaking in that a little bit thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 78,169

Keywords: cooks country, americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated, seafood recipes, shrimp, cioppino, shellfish, recipes

Id: KLuV7hY9-XE

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021