Tuscany Food
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Make the broth: boil the gurnard with carrots, celery onion and salt, then pass it in a vegetable mill. In a big casserole brown in oil plenty of garlic, parsley and hot pepper. Add octopus, cuttlefish, tattlers and clams and cook for 20 minutes (adding the fish broth when necessary Add some tomatoes and shrimp, mussels, prawns, cook for other10 minutes. Serve with bread slices. Cacciucco alla viareggina by chef Amelio Fantoni Time: 30 minutes
First gut the fish and cut it in pieces. Cook everything in a little of water with garlic, tomatoe paste, red pepper and salt. Not more then 30 minutes. Serve over toasted slices of bread (Tuscan bread, baked with no salt at woodfire) with a generous trickle of olive oil. Caciucco is made with various types of rockfish, most of which are not found in the U.S. However, one can use many others sorts of fish such as red snapper, rock cod, halibut, bass, or any other firm-fleshed fish. According to tradition, this soup should contain at least 5 different sorts of fish, as mani as the C's in its name.
Cacciucco is a very famous dish original of Livorno, now a big town on the Tuscan Sea. Etymologically speaking the name Cacciucco comes from the Turkish "Kuçuk" that means bits and pieces. Caciucco has a simple fundamental rule: use a variety of "pour fish", some of them with fish bones. Livorno's fishermen, as generally all fishermen, used to go fishing in the night and they were coming back early in the morning . Each variety of fished was exposed on the benches of the port and was sold directly to the consumers . The less valuable kinds of fishes that people didn't buy, were rinsed in the sea water and taken home by the fisherman How to make the soup for his family. So, on one side you would be able to make a real Caciucco only with the seafood of the Tuscany sea. On the other side you could make a good fish soup in the Cacciucco spirit using any fresh poor fish and seafood of your own sea. Now, we can find many slightly different variations of the recipe, all along the Tuscany coast. Following are the recipes of the two main versions, one from Livorno and the other one from Viareggio. They are still arguing about which is the best and periodically they organize contests. Baccala' alla livornese Ingredients: 1 kg baccala' oil parsley garlic tomatoes flour salt and pepper "Baccala' " is codfish preserved in salt. It must be kept in water for at least 12 hours, changing the water several times, before cooking it. Cut it in medium size pieces, dry them with paper, roll them in flour, fry in plenty of oil. Make the sauce: brown minced garlic and parsley for a minute in a pan, add tomatoes salt and pepper. Now put the fried baccala' in a casserole, cover it with the sauce, put in oven at 180° C for 40 minutes.
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