Fish Soup Chioggia Style

Fish Soup By Sapori e Dissapori

Fish Soup Chioggia Style by Sapori e Dissapori

Venice is well known for its fish and seafood based dishes. But did you know that also in the mainland of Veneto, people love to eat fish dishes from the tradition of the Republic of Venice?

This week we asked Erica Zampieri of Sapori e Dissapori, another fellow member of AIFB, Associazione Italian Food Bloggers,  to share with us one of her favorite fish recipes!

Remember, you can learn to prepare and cook fish in one of our cooking classes in Venice or in the countryside!

Here is her guest post, with the tradition fish soup recipe from Chioggia at the end!

The Story by Erica

My favorite restaurant?

It is the one with a sea view, so that you can breathe the air that comes from far and when I order a fish soup, I imagine the exhausting work that the fisherman had to do to bring on the tables such fresh and rich fish, full of flavors and aromas

Born and raised in the countryside near Padova, the sea has always been in my heart.

The sea of Padua people is notoriously Sottomarina, a maritime city near Venice and bordering Chioggia, where even today there is a beautiful fish market, my market.

My family, however, preferred the Emilia-Romagna coast; so we left on Friday afternoons, in the direction of Lido degli Scacchi, one of the seven Ferrara beaches.

Half of my town of Este had a home in the Ferrara shores; in the summer it seemed as if I had never left home, the familiar faces that walked around were so many.

I feel at home by the sea.

For those who do not know them, the Ferrara beaches are a very long stretch of beach; where a beach ends, the second begins and it goes on like this, up to Comacchio.

It was the summer of 1984. As usual, my family had rented the house for the summer months; I practically lived three months by the sea alternating mum and dad with maternal and paternal grandparents.

At the time, I never wanted to eat (I really need that now to dispose of a little ‘superfluous pounds”): I ate only fish, strange for a child and yet, I swear, when they presented me any kind of fish in all shapes and forms, it was sheer happiness.

One morning, I woke up early, rode my bike, could not be by the sea without one, and pedaling alone I headed to Porto Garibaldi: those who know the area also know that the road is not short at all. When I arrived, I placed myself on one of the docks to see the fishing boats returning from fishing.

By now they knew me, so the usual fisherman showed me the fish, and told me the story of that night of fishing.

Within half an hour, my dad and my sister came to get me back.

Of course, it useless to tell you, I went fishing every time I could with my grandfather, and almost every day I reached swimming “the rocks” and collected what we call “peoci”, or mussels. And so the spaghetti was always a party.

Growing, my passion for the sea has increased, now I’m lucky to be able to travel the world and see “other” seas.

This, instead, is an old Venetian recipe, almost in disuse; it has its origins in the area of Caorle and Chioggia, where it was prepared by the families of fishermen, who used cheap fish, while the most expensive were sold to the fish market of the city.

According to Maffei, the brodetto previously used only one fish quality, usually the “go”, a small fish typical of the lagoon of Venice.

It was cooked in a boat, in a crock pot, on charcoal.

Fish Soup by Sapori e Dissapori

Broetto de pesse alla Ciosòta – Fish Soup Chioggia Style

Ingredients for 4 people

1 kg of mixed fish like scorpion fish, monkfish, and any other white fleshy fish that might be in season

500 g of mixed seafood, like, according to season, shrimp, scampi, cuttlefish, squid

500 g mixed mussels and clams

1 clove of garlic

1 white onion

1 celery stalk

1 carrot

½ glass of dry white wine

1 spoon of tomato paste/sauce

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Fish soup by Sapori e Dissapori

Preparation

• Clean the mussels, remove the beards and leave them in cold water and salt with the clams.
• Eviscerate and clean all the fish, fillet it and put the carcasses aside.  Arrange the fillets in a tray, cover with foil and refrigerate.
• Finely chop the onion and garlic.
• In a saucepan heat a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Toast, pressing with a ladle, the carcasses until browned. Pour 3 liters of very cold water and some ice cubes. Bring to a boil, add the celery and carrot, lower the heat, froth and reduce the liquid by half. Filter, set aside and keep warm.
• In a shallow pan, gently brown the chopped onion and garlic; add the prawns, shrimp, a few ladles of the fish stock, the tomato sauce and the wine.
• Let evaporate the wine and cook over low heat and covered for 15 ‘. Add the mussels and clams and cook them until they open. Finally add the fillets cut into small pieces and cook for another 5 minutes, without ever stirring.
• Season with salt and a generous ground pepper, serve with grilled polenta.

A poem

 “Oh, the courageous life of the Fisherman,

of all is the best,

it is free from disagreements, full of gaiety

and it is loved by many, it is a certainty.

Other amenities

They are not that banality,

only this

it’s an honest pleasure,

because what we do

does not cause any harm,

but contentment and joy for everyone.”

This is how Izaak Walton recited in his book “The compleat Angler”

Thank you Erica for sharing this delicious recipe with us!

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