I honestly can’t imagine why having seafood, and particularly a bowl of homemade seafood stew or cioppino, might be considered some sort of sacrifice when one gives up meat during lent or even a day per week during lent. With seafood prices the way they are, folks should probably consider eating more chicken/pork than fish… A few days ago, at about 10am, Mrs. MM mentioned she wanted to eat some cioppino for lunch. We hadn’t had a hearty pot of seafood soup in nearly a year, so we sent the cook to the Seaside market to buy some crab, shrimp, squid, octopus and fish and we managed to get lunch on the table by 1230pm…
I have featured cioppino before, here, and that post has links to three other posts, my informal recipe described along the way in one or more of the posts. This particular pot had about two kilos of cleaned blue crab, less than a kilo of medium large white shrimp, roughly 300 grams of baby octopus, half a kilo of tangigue fish, half a kilo of mussels (these were frozen boxed mussels from NZ, not local), and about half a kilo of squid in a freshly made fish broth and lots of tomatoes, chilies and onions. White wine rather than red, because that’s the bottle that leftover in the fridge…
Some fresh herbs (Italian parsley and basil) and some grilled bread on the side and it was a wonderful lunch for us and the crew. Serve a crisp green salad on the side. This pot of seafood easily provided 10-12 hearty servings. At roughly PHP2,000 to make, or PHP200 ($4) or less per portion, it didn’t seem so extravagant after all.
10 Responses
looks very yummy!
Lovely combination from the market. With very fresh seafood ingredients, you can never go wrong with cioppino. Looks very appetizing. Eating meat is more sacrifice for me though.
Great entry as always, but makes me miss being there and having easy access to fresh seafood and produce. Do you have any tips for picking out good frozen seafood choices?
when i was still single, my siblings and i would always look forward to Lent since we know we will be having seafoods as ulam and we prefer it more than meat. there will always be crabs, mussels, oysters, squid, salmon, etc. in different forms on the table that we’d end up stuffing ourselves silly. later on did i realised that we should’ve abstained from eating seafoods and ate meat instead since during lent, one ought to sacrifice the things (food) one love the most, hehe
We didn’t renew our S&R membership this year and if there’s one thing I miss it’s those frozen mussels from NZ.
Hi MM – any tips on how to buy blue crab – alimasag? I never see this alive in the market
I cooked cioppino last Christmas following your basic recipe. I used crab meat, peeled shrimp, grouper, NZ mussels, and toasted guanciale. Kailangan wala nang balat ang mga seafood dahil I gave half to our priest (American) and he told me he likes his seafood peeled already. Napakasarap daw!
Add some saffron it might become a bouillabaisse :) such a lenten theme dish MM :)
Where’s the rice MM…..?
I also prepared the same dish and boy, was it a hearty stew! Because we’re just a family of four, the cost was far less. I bought my seafood at Farmers’ Market in Cubao. Here’s my post: https://cucharatenedor.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/an-italian-sunday-lunch-fare/