Cioppino

I'll be honest, historically I've steered as far away from this dish as I've possibly could.  It mostly has to do with that the base of the dish is mussels and clams, which unfortunately are two of my least favorite ingredients on the planet.  Not sure what it is, but I just can't eat any bi-valves other than scallops.  Mussels, clams, and oysters are just out.  All of this is a bit hard to admit, since I've eaten fish skeleton at Alinea, and was really gung ho about the potential for more at Next.  I really like fish skeleton but I can't eat a freaking oyster.  Go figure.

All that said, I decided to soldier on through this recipe without the mussels, and in my very humble opinion it didn't suffer at all. 

The mise.  Yellow pepper, onion, salt, celery, carrots, tomato paste, wine, thyme, garlic, shrimp, flounder, lemon, chicken broth, whole tomatoes, red pepper flakes. fennel seed, and bay leaf.

The veggies were chopped up and went into a bit of olive oil to saute for a bit. 

Once the saute was completed the seasonings and the tomato paste went in until the tomato paste began to caramelize a bit.

Next up was the broth, lemon juice and tomatoes.  This whole mixture simmered for about 10 minutes to thicken up slightly.

Earlier I had cut the fish into smaller pieces and they went into the broth mixture at this point to cook.

Time for the shrimp.  Once the shrimp went in the whole mixture cooked for 2-3 more minutes before I killed the heat.

Cioppino is a classic dish to have on Fisherman's Warf in San Francisco.  Which ironically enough, San Francisco is a place I have almost zero desire to visit.  I'd be willing to go to Napa and eat at the French Laundry but San Francisco proper, meh.  It probably boils down to the fact that I can't get past to culture there,  too many hippies.

The classic side for cioppino is a sourdough crouton.  So here I have a sourdough loaf a bit of garlic and olive oil.

The croutons were spread with a bit of olive oil and the garlic and went under the broiler for a bit.   These are the completed croutons.

The final plate.