Ciao to 2010 with Cioppino

With all the traveling and working and traveling all year long, Ben and I decided that if what you're doing at midnight on New Years you're doing all year, we wanted to be at home, whatever we did.  So we stayed in and enjoyed the quiet and warmth of our own house, with for once, both of us in it.  To add a little of the midnight magic to the mix, we decided to make a special meal to ring in 2011 - Cioppino.  While it finds its roots in San Francisco, Cioppino is also an Italian tradition, and provides a hearty, warm meal perfect for a chilly December night.

I started with a Giada recipe (that's the original in the link), tweaking it as needed to accomodate what I had in the pantry. I also halved it to make it manageable for two people since shellfish doesn't usually reheat well. I served it with roasted garlic crostinis, the recipe (very very basic) is at the end.

Ingredients for Cioppino

1.5 tablespoons olive oil (one generous turn around the pan with the olive oil)
1 small fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1 small onion, chopped
2 medium shallots, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper flakes (this is a best approximation, I just eyeball this stuff)
A generous 1/8 cup tomato paste
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes in juice
3/4 cups dry white wine
2.5 cups chicken stock (the original recipe calls for fish stock, but unless you make it homemade I'm not wild about the fish stock you can buy in the store so without the time or requisite fish parts to make my own, I opted for a tried and true, although different alternative)
1 bay leaf
1/3 pound little neck clams, scrubbed (the original recipe calls for manila and if you can get them I'd go that route, but they can be hard to find depending on the time of year and little necks are a reasonable substitute)
1/3 pound mussels, scrubbed, debearded
1/2 pound uncooked large shrimp, peeled and deveined
3/4 pounds halibut, cut into 2-inch chunks

Heat the oil in a very large pot (e.g. dutch oven) over medium heat. Add the fennel, onion, shallots, and salt and saute until the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes, and saute 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste. Add tomatoes with their juices, wine, chicken stock and bay leaf. Cover and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer until the flavors blend, about 30 minutes.

Add the clams and mussels to the cooking liquid. Cover and cook until the clams and mussels begin to open, about 5 minutes. Add the shrimp and fish. Simmer gently until the fish and shrimp are just cooked through, and the clams are completely open, stirring gently, about 5 minutes longer (discard any clams and mussels that do not open). Remove bay leaf. Season the soup, to taste, with more salt and red pepper flakes.
Ladle the soup into bowls and serve.

Crostinis
1 head of garlic
Olive oil
1 half-loaf french baguette

Before starting the Cioppino, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Slice the top 1/3 off the top of a head of garlic, just revealing the individual cloves.  Place the garlic on a piece of aluminum foil, sprinkle the garlic head with olive oil.  Wrap the foil around the garlic, covering it completely.  Roast in the oven for 45 minutes. Remove, allow to cool and open.  Squeeze the garlic head over a bowl to extract the roasted garlic.

While the Cioppino broth is simmering, slice the baguette on a diagonal.  Place the slices on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with olive oil. During the last five minutes of the Cioppino's cooking, place the baguette slices under the broiler until lightly browned.  Remove from broiler and spread the roasted garlic extracted from the head with a knife over the baguette slices.  Serve two slices with each bowl of Cioppino.