Cioppino.

I was looking at beautiful pictures of food all weekend, looking for inspiration (as well as gloating over my foodgawker post!), and I kept getting blown away by gorgeous pictures of mussels, which got me thinking, "I need to cook mussels, and I need to cook them NOW!"

I've only ever prepared mussels once, and that was in culinary school. We made a dish called "cioppino" (pronounced chuh-PEE-noh). It's much like a seafood stew with a tomato broth that was brought to the west coast by Italian immigrants.

Notice something missing from this picture? Yeah, that's right... the MUSSELS.

I went to the store on the day I decided to make this, and guess what? NO MUSSELS. I was devastated. Especially since my husband had been there the day prior and had seen the mussels (said they looked good too!). That was ok, though, because the beautiful 10/15 gulf coast shrimp more than made up for it.

The beautiful thing about cioppino is that you can use any combination of fish you like. Much like a meat stew, it can kind of be a hodge-podge of everything. In my version, I used extra littleneck clams (to make up for the lack of mussels), large gulf coast shrimp, tilapia, and scallops.


I like this dish. Simple to prepare with wonderful homey flavors. Red wine, tomatoes, and a little bit of acid from lemon juice makes for a great combination with the seafood. I first made the dish with the requisite amount of hot sauce, but the "gulf coast" in me found this to be not nearly enough. I'm sure the Italians didn't intend for this dish to be overwhelmingly hot or "Tabasco" flavored, but for me, if I have any kind of seafood in a tomato-y broth, then it better be spicy. I'm not Cajun, but I sure do like to eat like one! I'm leaving the hot sauce amount as is, but if you're anything like me, I would double it, then have some extra on the side for after you serve it.

Unfortunately, I decided to not cook the clams in a separate pot (I try to avoid using more pots than necessary), and my clams ended up being stubborn and holding on to life until the bitter end, which resulted in my shrimp being a touch on the overdone side. I have modified the recipe so that you can cook all the fish in the same pot, but so the timing is right.

I would love to hear your versions! If you try this dish, please leave me a comment and let me know how it turns out, what combination of seafood you used, and any modifications you made. It's fun to experiment, and we can all learn from them!


For a printable version of this recipe, click the link below:
Cioppino