Monterey Bay Cioppino

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Monterey Bay Cioppino

To create a home recipe inspired by the cioppino served up at Phil’s Fish Market & Eatery in Moss Landing, California, we started by making a tomatoey marinara base that relied on pantry staples and came together quickly. Instead of breaking out the food processor to make a traditional pesto to flavor our stew as Phil does, we simply added the pesto’s key ingredients (olive oil, basil, and garlic) to the mix.

Phil’s version is brimming with a wide range of seafood, but we wanted to tighten the roster for our version, so we bypassed clams and calamari, opting instead for easy-to-find shrimp, scallops, sea bass, and mussels. Adding our seafood to the pot in stages and finishing the cooking off the heat ensured that each component was perfectly cooked.

Servings:

Calories: 401kcal

Author: Cook's Country

Ingredients

Marinara:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion halved and sliced thin
3 garlic cloves sliced thin
¾ teaspoon salt
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
1 cup tomato puree
½ cup chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon packed light brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Cioppino:

1 ½ pounds skinless sea bass fillets 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
12 ounces extra-large shrimp 21 to 25 per pound, peeled, deveined, and tails removed
12 ounces large scallops tendons removed, cut in half horizontally
salt
pepper
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound mussels scrubbed and debearded
½ cup chopped fresh basil
¼ cup dry sherry
3 garlic cloves minced
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon saffron threads crumbled
2 8-ounce bottles clam juice
1 12-inch baguette sliced and toasted
lemon wedges to serve

Instructions

Make the marinara:

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat until shimmering.
Add onion, garlic, and salt and cook until onion is softened and just beginning to brown, about 8 minutes.
Add tomato sauce, tomato puree, basil, sugar, Worcestershire, and cinnamon and bring to boil.
Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until marinara is slightly thickened, 10 to 12 minutes.
Remove from heat, cover, and set aside.

Make the ciopinno:

Season sea bass, shrimp, and scallops with salt and pepper; set aside.
Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium-high heat until shimmering.
Add mussels, basil, sherry, garlic, Worcestershire, saffron, and ½ teaspoon salt.
Cover and cook until mussels start to open, about 2 minutes.
Stir in clam juice and marinara until combined.
Nestle sea bass and scallops into pot and bring to boil.
Reduce heat to medium, cover, and simmer until seafood is just turning opaque, about 2 minutes.
Nestle shrimp into pot and return to simmer.
Cover and cook until all seafood is opaque, about 3 minutes.
Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 5 minutes.
Serve with baguette slices and lemon wedges.

Notes

We recommend buying “dry” scallops, which don’t have chemical additives and taste better than “wet” scallops. Dry scallops will look ivory or pinkish; wet scallops are bright white. If you can’t find fresh dry scallops, you can substitute thawed frozen scallops.

Seafood Substitutions

Our version of Phil’s cioppino uses a carefully considered collection of seafood, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it if you can’t find everything on the ingredient list. For instance, sea bass is our first choice, but you can also use cod, haddock, or halibut fillets of a similar size.

Here are a few more options:

Double the amount of shrimp or scallops if you can’t find one or the other.
Use small clams in place of the mussels, or use half clams and half mussels.
Garnish the stew with cooked crabmeat—or, for the full Phil’s effect, cooked crab legs—before serving.

Nutrition