Cioppino

Here's a fun, simple and somewhat easy recipe that Ngoc suggested we try last Friday evening. The hardest part is getting all the seafood from your local grocer!

As far as I know, the central tenant of cioppino is a tomato-based soup, with, at the very least, crab, some shellfish, and a white fish of choice. Believe it or not, Cioppino isn't some age-old Italian recipe. It was actually developed by Italian fisherman in the wharfs of San Francisco mid 1800's.

Cioppino

From the Sea:

1/2 crab, precooked (bite me)

1 lb white fish of your choice, fresh (cod, red/pacific snapper, halibut)

1 lb either mussels or clams

1 dozen medium prawns

From the Land:

2 medium onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, diced

1 tsp. dried oregano

1/2 tsp. chili powder

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. black pepper, ground

2 tbsp. tomato paste

1 28 oz. can whole tomatos, sliced, juice reserved

1 cup chicken broth

1 cup dry white wine

1 cup bottled clam juice

1 bay leaf

3 tbsp. olive oil

Start out browning your onions in the olive oil in a pot over medium high heat. Add oregano, chili powder, bay leaf, and stir constantly. Once onions are brown, add garlic and simmer for 1 minutes. Add tomato paste, and stir until dissolved.

Reduce heat and add white wine. Reduce for 4 - 5 minutes, and then add remaining wet ingredients, tomatoes, broth, and clam juice. Once warm, taste and season with salt and black pepper as necessary. Allow to stew on low heat for 30 minutes

If using uncooked shrimp, add the shells, shrimp, and fish and cook for 5 minutes. Cooked shrimp should instead be added with crab. Add crab and stew for another few minutes until hot. Serve immediately with toasted sourdough bread.


This should result in a medium hot Cioppino. If you like it spicy, crank up the powdered chili to a full tsp. or more! You can also easily add long grain rice to this and turn it into a Jambalaya-ish stew.

Fish for the New Year #1: Pacific Cod in Coconut Milk Sauce

[Note: pictures to follow]

Fish! Versatile, agreeable, healthy (omega 3's and 6's!), and delicious. What's not to love? Part one of an I'm-not-sure-how-many part series for 2009 celebrating that adorable un-meat called fish!

Pacific cod is a white, moderately dense fish that responds well to steaming, baking, and even frying. You may remember cod from such memorable wonders as Fish 'n Chips, Cioppino, and the cod-piece. It's also usually half the price of its fresh caught child-prodigy younger brother, Pacific Halibut. There's a good reason for that. Cod, like other fish from the family Gadidae, each produce several million eggs at spawning, making them highly prolific in their habitats and very commercially fishable. Cooked correctly and with care, basic steamed cod comes out pearly white with fleshy, thick pieces of meat separating easily at the grain. Add a little lemon juice, and viola!


On Monday night, Ngoc and I opted to cook a beautiful, fresh 1.8 lb. fillet of cod with a spicy coconut milk sauce. Warning, this recipe is not for the faint of heart. Its a veritable ground zero of ingredients.
Baked Cod in Spicy Coconut Milk Cream Sauce

The Fresh:

2 lb. Cod fillet

2 cups chopped onion

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 tsp. finely chopped ginger (not dry!)

1 tsp. minced serrano chile

1 cup diced tomatoes

4 tbsp. juice of lemon

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

The Dry:

6 tsp. ground coriander

1 tsp. cumin powder

1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper powder

1/4 tsp. turmeric powder

1/2 tsp. fennel seeds, preferably ground (or whole)

1 tsp. salt

The Uncategorized:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk

1 tbsp. cider vinegar

Add oil to a pan and cook onions over medium high heat until starting to brown. Add garlic and cook an additional 30 seconds. Add ginger and green chile, cooking for another two minutes. Add tomatoes, dry ingredients, and cider vinegar and saute until tomato chunks break down. Add coconut milk and simmer for another 5-10 minutes on lower heat until sauce thickens.

Meanwhile, rub the cod with the lemon juice on each side and place in a lightly oiled baking dish (cut the fillet in half if you have to!). Bake, uncovered, for 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Remove cod from over and cover with coconut milk sauce. Cover tightly with foil and return to the oven for another 15 minutes.

Serve over a carb of your choice, gently sprinkling cilantro over fish before serving.


We actually ate the fish over a smear of mashed creamer potatoes. For those of you unwise to the ways of mashed potatoes, never make them without (1) garlic and (2) cheese! It will change your life.

Also adding to the antics that night was our realization, mid recipe, that our can of coconut milk had separated and gone bad. Canned food going back, wtf? That's where I made a clutch call that if we added a bit of cider vinegar, and a shot of lemon juice, the sauce would be wet enough to eat without coconut milk. Not so. the dry ingredients and serrano really make the sauce inedible without the milk to temper the spiciness. So I threw on some shoes and made a safeway run in record time, salvaging the night and the fish!

2007 Ventoso Toscano Red

I'll admit that I am not terribly well versed in non-domestic wines. Its pretty easy, living in the Bay, to get locked into domestic varietals. Zins, Cabs, Merlots, I'm pretty comfortable with. But characterizing a good Italian wine is definitely stepping out of my element.

Nonetheless, its one of my many goals for the new year. Get to know French and Italian wines. I started this goal in earnest last Wednesday night by grabbing a 2007 Ventoso Toscano red wine from the Vine Street wine shop.

Only a year off the vine and this bashful little red is already very drinkable. A moderate nose of fruit and a little wood leads to a variety of flavors up front. Cool rose petals and melon as well as some strawberry characterize this somewhat dry wine. Its fruitiness reminds me of a Pinot Noir, with enough clout to tackle medium-heavy meats. The tastes don't stick around, and a few seconds later the flavors are gone, with very little left to linger.

Edit: after a little research, I discovered that this wine is 65% Sangiovese, 25% Canaiolo, and 10% from local Tuscan grapes. Sangiovese is huge in Tuscany. Also, the practice of mixing Tuscan grapes with more popular varietals is a well-known and regionally renouned practice, resulting in wines referred to as "Super-Tuscans"!

Chicken in Sun-Dried Tomato Cream and Israeli Cous Cous

I'm not much of a braiser. Its not that I don't like juicy, tender, slow cooked meats. Rather, I just always had an excuse...whether it be equipment, time, or know-how...to opt for a much simpler cooking method.

The formula for braising is simple. (1) Low Heat (2) Moisture (3) Acid (4) Time. Braising is designed to break down the collagen and connective tissues in tougher cuts of meat, while at the same time infusing it with deeply flavored and textured sauce. Take a sturdy pot or Dutch Oven, add oil, brown some pork shoulder, add enough wine to half-submerge the meat and an hour or two of low heat, and viola, you've just invented braising in its most basic form.

On Wednesday, I was tasked with using Ngoc's sun-dried tomatos from the ferry building farmer's market to create something delicious.



Braised Chicken Breast in Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce

(makes 2 servings)
1 large chicken breast, halved

3/4 cup sun-dried tomatos, coarsely chopped

2 tsp. olive oil

2 cloves garlic, diced

3 tsp. fresh basil, finely chopped

1/2 cup half&half (or cream)

1/3 cup dry white wine

1/2 tsp. salt

In a dutch oven, deep cast iron skillet or pot, or other thick-walled pot, heat oil and brown chicken for a few minutes on each side. Salt chicken in pot, once on each side, before turning. Add garlic and saute for 30 seconds. Reduce heat to low.

Once pot has cooled, add half&half, wine, and sun-dried tomatoes. Cover and cook on low for 10-12 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through. Remove chicken. Add basil to cream sauce and continue to cook on medium heat until thickened. Serve over chicken.



I'm not gonna lie, Ngoc even commented that this was one of the best dishes I'd ever made. And so simple! If you are wild about the sauce, it'd be easy to double the sauce ingredients, triple the amount of cream, and reduce that down even further after cooking the chicken to a super rich and creamy topping similar in consistency to alfredo. Yum!

On Wednesday I also cooked up some Israeli couscous to go along with the chicken. Previously unknown fact, Israeli couscous is not actually couscous! Couscous is moistened, whole semolina wheat rolled in wheat flour, while Israeli couscous is actually a pasta-like product, similar to Orzo, made completely from shaped wheat flour.



Israeli couscous is so customizable! The basic basic method of preparing is in a pot or high-walled skillet pan on low heat, ladelling in 1/2 cup after 1/2 cup of vegetable or chicken broth until the Israeli couscous is spongy when pressed with the bottom of a fork. A little salt and pepper for tasting, and done.

My simple variation folded in some chopped parsley and a squirt of lemon juice at the end, but the possibilities are endless. Next time I might throw in a spoon or two of tomato paste.

Fettucini Carbonara

I can't exactly tell you why I had been wanting to make a hearty Carbonara lately.  Maybe I have been oogling one too many pictures of cured meat (porn) lately.  Maybe I'm just carb-deprived.  Either way, Ngoc deserves a silver star putting up with my eagerness all weekend.

This is a laughingly easy and quick dish to make.  This recipe is a hybrid of the time-tested (read:outdated) entry in my Better Homes manual, and a popular entry on AllRecipes.com.  Not wanting it to be so eggy, and craving a healthy dose of fromaaaage, I added a couple tweaks.


Fettucini Carbonara

8 oz. dry fettucini

1/2 cup cream or half & half

3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 shallot, diced

1/4 yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, dices

2 bacon-thick slices pancetta (2-3 oz.) dices

1 tbsp. butter

2 egg yolks

3 tsp. olive oil

1 tsp. freshly ground pepper

Bring a pot of water to boil and toss in fettucini to cook.  In the meantime, dice shallots, onion, garlic, and pancetta.  Once the fettucini is cooked, remove from pot and replace with olive oil.  Once oil it heated, add onions, shallots, and garlic, stirring until translucent.  Add pancetta, stirring occasionally.

In a bowl, whisk together egg yolks and cream until evenly mixed.  In a separate pan, melt butter.  While butter is melting, add pasta back into the pot and mix with garlic, shallots, pancetta, and onion until pasta is well oiled.  Reduce heat to pasta pot, but do not extinguish heat entirely.

Add cream and yolk mixture to butter and whisk thoroughly until mixture is heated evenly.  Do not stop whisking or else egg will solidify.  After 1 - 2 minutes whisking yolk/butter/cream mixture, pour over pasta.  Add parmesan cheese and mix well until cheese is melted.  Serve immediately with freshly ground pepper.

Notes: the end product was dangerously yummy, but if i had to do it again, I would try to reduce the saltiness.  I think the amount of pancetta used in the recipe is definitely more than enough to flavor the entire dish....Also, parmesan cheese might be reduced to 1/2 cup for you cheese loathers out there.  Either of these two edits might help bring down the saltiness a notch or so.  This dish is not for the faint of heart, literally!  Make sure you do cardio beforehand, or else you'll regret that you didn't.