Cioppino with Fennel and Saffron {A Collaboration} (2024)

This traditional San Francisco recipe for seafood stew in tomato broth gets an update with fennel, saffron, a glug of wine, and plenty of olive oil, and it makes enough to feed a crowd.

*Many thanks to Richard Dawes Fine Wine for sponsoring The Bojon Gourmet this month! Check out his killer selection here.*

I rarely cook seafood at home due to my extreme squeamishness. This dislike of handling raw, formerly-living critters developed while working at my first restaurant job. I was 17, on summer break, when a French chef at a restaurant down the street from us gave me a job as a pantry cook.

I would come in every day, check the inventory, and begin prepping for the day's salads and cold appetizers. Most of my tasks were simple: wash and chop romaine, make croutons, cut vegetables, emulsify dressings. Some days, I also got to bake bread – individual buns filled with garlic and rosemary and leavened with fresh yeast. Others, I learned to make crème brulée, tiramisù and fresh pasta. Service would start and my day would become a frenzy of salads tossed with various dressings in large bowls. I left each day coated in oil and reeking of vinegar.

All of which I didn't mind one bit. I LOVED my job. I thought it was the coolest job anyone could have ever. (Particularly when the bartender would swap me a piña colada for a slice of cheesecake, or the cooks would slip me an order of lobster ravioli.)

What I did not love was the shrimp.

Seafood Louie salads sold like hotcakes and it was my job every day to blanch a vat of jumbo shrimp, rip off their little legs, and devein them. I HATED ripping the legs off the shrimp. I imagined hearing their little shrieks of anguish, and with each pull I would be awash with crippling guilt. The shrimp may have been long gone, but I was dying a slow death on the inside.

One night, I made a critical error. It was my first Friday night working alone and the restaurant was packed. Orders started pouring in and when I opened the cooler to make a louie salad, my hand stopped short. I had forgotten to cook the shrimp.

In a blind frenzy, I threw a pot of water on the burner and cranked up the heat. I tore through the freezer and found only a bag of cooked, peeled shrimp. I dumped them in the boiling water and went back to making salads. My chef walked into my station, saw the cooked shrimp boiling away, and turned puce with rage.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOINGGGG???!!!" he screamed in his thick Southern French accent that I could barely understand.

I don't really remember what happened after that. I didn't get fired. I didn't cry. I probably made a lot of salads and went home to get high with my bad-news high school boyfriend while listening to Radiohead.

But I do remember that that was the last time I ever cooked shrimp.

So when my dear friend Ana suggested making cioppino together the other day, I hesitated. In addition to my own shrimp baggage, Jay, a recovering vegetarian, is also squeamish about seafood. At home we rarely venture beyond smoked salmon on morning toast. But I love a bowl of brothy cioppino, which Ana informed me was invented not in Italy but in our very own San Francisco back in the day. I enjoyed a superb version years ago at a long-gone restaurant in Santa Cruz which involved saffron and fennel in the broth and a chunk of crusty bread served to the side. We set about to recreate it.

Using this version from Simply Recipes as our guide, we wandered down the street to our local Whole Foods and loaded up the cart with clams, mussels, fish, stock ingredients, a bottle of wine and a sour batard. In the seafood aisle, the shrimp waved to me with their little feet. I recalled the ripping sound they would make and winced. But then Ana said, "These are the ones I got last time," and gestured to a pile of peeled, cooked shrimp. Salvation.

Back at home we sauteed, steamed and simmered between clicks of the camera. I was slightly terrified of working with shellfish, but the process surprised me by being stupid easy. The clams and mussels took minutes to steam open, the fish was simply cut into chunks and added to the soup base to cook briefly, and the shrimp took only the effort of being dropped into the pot of simmering soup to heat through. Little did I know how fun it would be to work with and photograph these new shapes and textures.

Ana has an eye for detail and is one of the most fun, sweet, creative, and upbeat people I've ever met. She styled these shots in ways I never would have thought, and I'm kind of in love with the results. We were particularly thrilled to sit down after a long afternoon of cooking to bowls brimming with saffron-kissed broth, tender shellfish, pepper, herbs, and all manner of other good things.

This cioppino is deceptively simple to make, and the result is a giant pot of bright and beautiful seafoody goodness.

Many thanks to Ana of Fluxi on Tour for the super (ha!) fun day! You can read her account of our collaboration and find out more about the history of cioppino here.

More Soup Recipes:

• Vegetarian Miso Ramen with Rice Noodles, Sweet Potato, and Broccolini {gluten-free}
• Roasted Yellow Tomato Soup with Green Harissa and Halloumi Croutons
• Miso and Soba Noodle Soup with Sriracha Roasted Tofu and Shiitake Mushrooms
• Caprese Gazpacho
  

*Bojon appétit!For more Bojon Gourmet in your life, follow along onInstagram,Facebook,orPinterest, purchase my gluten-free cookbookAlternative Baker, orsubscribe to receive new posts via email. And if you make this cioppino recipe, I’d love to know. Leave a comment and rating below, and tag your Instagram snaps @The_Bojon_Gourmet and #bojongourmet.*

Cioppino with Fennel and Saffron

Adapted from Simply Recipes

Feel free to mix up the seafood here. We liked this combination, but you could also use lobster, crab, or other fish such as halibut or cod. Be sure to serve this with a bottle of wine and some crusty bread for mopping up the broth.

Makes 8-10 servings

1 pound (450 grams) raw clams in their shells
1 pound (450 grams) raw mussels in their shells
1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for finishing the soup
1/4 teaspoon gently packed saffron threads, crumbled
a handful of fresh thyme sprigs
1 large onion, peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
1 large fennel bulb, fronds removed and reserved for garnish, bulb thinly sliced
3 large cloves garlic
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes
2 cups dry white wine (such as Sauvignon Blanc)
broth from cooking the clams and mussels (see below)
2 cups vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1/2 pound (225 grams) cooked, peeled shrimp
1 pound (450 grams) white fish (such as Tilapia), cut into 1-inch chunks
a handful of parsley leaves and fennel fronds
cracked black pepper
lemon wedges

Place the clams and mussels in a steamer basket set in a pot over 2 cups of water. Cover and bring to a simmer, steaming the mollusks until they open. Remove the mollusks and strain and reserve the broth.

In a large soup pot, heat the oil and saffron over a medium flame until the oil shimmers, then add the thyme, onion, and fennel. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is tender, 10 minutes, then stir in the garlic, cook for 1 minute, and add the salt, tomatoes, white wine, mollusk steaming water, vegetable stock, and bay leaf. Bring the soup to a simmer and cook, partially covered, for 20 minutes.

Add the fish and continue to simmer until cooked through, 3-5 minutes. Add the shrimp, mussels, and clams and cook to heat them through. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt if you feel the soup needs it.

Ladle the soup into wide bowls and top with a good drizzle of olive oil, a shower of parsley leaves and fennel fronds, a few turns of black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon.

Leftover soup keeps well, refrigerated airtight, for up to 2 days.

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