Happy New Year! If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been on a big soup/stew/chili kick lately here at the Ranch. This is partially convenience driven — it’s easy to throw a bunch of stuff in a pot and let it simmer — but also driven by the seasons.
wrote last month about the idea of “honoring seasons” and embracing “wintering” in life, in fitness, in food. “Life is cyclical” we need to “adapt to the season we are in” for all aspects of life.Subconsciously or not, that’s the way I like to approach cooking. If you scroll through the CWD archives, you’ll notice in the summer, we cook quickly, mostly outdoors. Meals are (relatively) lighter — more blackened chicken over salad from the garden, less osso bucco. But as the weather gets cooler, flavors get deeper, cook times get longer, meals get richer. This is where stews really shine1. Something about a rich, savory broth on a cold night — there’s not much better.
So here we are, in the depths of winter, making fish stew.
This recipe is another one driven by our fish share and is inspired by this recipe from Brooks Reitz’s newsletter,
2. For the most part, what we’re making below aligns with Brooks’s recipe, but we made a few tweaks given what was available in our pantry vs. his. I think you’ve got a lot of latitude here in how you bring this together — the important part is building the base stock, after that, what you choose to fill the stew out with is really up to you.
Pour a hearty glut of olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan and set to medium heat. While the oil is heating up, dice up an onion, a few stalks of celery, and several cloves of garlic. Dump that into the pot and sauté until the veggies are translucent, fragrant, and maybe taking on a little color. Add a dollop of tomato paste, stir, and let cook until well incorporated.
Dump in a can of crushed tomatoes, a hefty pour of white wine3, and then season to taste with salt, pepper, fish sauce, and hot sauce4. You can then dump in a bottle of clam juice5, tin of chopped clams6, tinned mussels7, and chickpeas. Stir well to incorporate, then add 1-2 pounds of fish chunks8, stir, and let the fish cook for a few minutes.
Serve hot, ideally with fresh, warm, crusty bread.
So there’s fish stew. Mrs. CWD and I both agreed that this is one of the few ways to use fish that doesn’t taste appreciably worse the next day upon reheating, so if you get a little over your skis and make more than is appropriate for one night — don’t worry about it.
I don’t have much else to add for you this week. We’re settling into the new routine here on the ranch, with Baby CWD slowly but surely adjusting to a circadian rhythm and sleeping with some degree of predictability. I’m reminded constantly the power of getting outside on mood — both on his, mine, Mrs., and Kiddo’s. Cool stuff. Nature is powerful — so get outside! I’m also setting my intention for the year to “seek good” — in every sense of the phrase. I’m sure I’ll expound upon that more in a future dispatch… but setting it out into the universe for you all now!
Even though, as I recently learned, the quintessential stew, lamb stew, is traditionally a spring dish in Ireland — since that’s when, ya know, you actually have lamb.
I recently became a paid subscriber, because Brooks has some great stuff. It also showed up in our inspiration round up a few weeks ago.
If you’re thinking ahead here, and you have them on hand, you can simmer some shrimp heads and shells in your white wine and make a quick shrimp stalk. Hat tip to Cooking with Chris on Twitter for the idea, though I did supplement my stock with some fish sauce to amp up the umami.
Brooks recommends Red Boat Fish Sauce and Red Clay Hot Sauce, both of which I am a big fan.
Bar Harbor brand recommended.
See above. These two ingredients are especially funny for me to be using in a recipe today, as I distinctly remember as a young kid, playing in your basement, Grammy, thinking how disgusting it was to have clam juice and chopped clams stored away. Gross! How the times change.
I like Patagonia Provisions here.
In our case, flounder.
Great recipe Lou. Definitely will try.
However, will continue to make my favorite clams and spaghetti. Lot’s of canned clams in my cupboard.
I was kind of halfway in thinking "yeah, this could be something I might make" until I saw the fish heads. I think I prefer a recipe for lamb stew; however, like Grammy, a can of minced clams, chopped clams, and clam juice are staples in my pantry, so maybe next recipe can incorporate those ingredients in another way.