Dining at Phil’s Fish Market with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget in Moss Landing, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
When my daughter Florence was growing up, my family often
went out to Phil’s Fish Market and Restaurant in Moss Landing (across from
Elkhorn Slough and into the port area) for our favorite dish there – cioppino.
Cioppino is called a San Francisco stew, sometimes even an
invention of the city. Cioppino is not
an invention; it is a Ligurian dish from Genoa, Italy. Genoa is a port city that used to have a large,
merchant fleet and is nicknamed “La Superba.”
Most of the Italians in San Francisco are descendants of
immigrants from Genoa, so food from that region is the Italian fare of that
city. (For information on Genoese and
Ligurian food, in general, see Flavors of the Riviera by Colman
Andrews. He also writes of what the food
of Nice, France is like, which uses many of the same ingredients as Italian
cuisine.)
The Italians in Monterey County are mostly of Sicilian
descent, so they go out to Phil’s Fish Market and Restaurant to eat Geneose
Cioppino fish stew, too. (A great
cookbook about Sicilian food is Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty-Five Centuries
of Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti.)
The cioppino at Phil’s Fish Market and Restaurant is
especially good, because they use Dungeness crab from Alaska and the Pacific
West Coast to make it in their version instead of mussels that you find in many
recipes. (Parisians call mussels “poor
man’s oysters.”)
Sicilians do know how to cook Dungeness crab, so they buy 6
to 12 at a time to make a nice meal for their family. (As a tip for visitors, Sicilians in Monterey
go to the Fish House or Vito’s in Pacific Grove to eat well when not cooking
for their families.)
Basically, the ingredients of cioppino that you boil
together until the fish fillets are cooked follow (you can tell what something
tastes like by looking at ingredients):
-olive oil
-fennel (optional – use a splash of Ricard or Pernod, if you
do not have fennel)
-onion
-shallots
-garlic cloves
-red pepper flakes
-tomato paste
-diced tomatoes
-white wine
-fish stock
-clams
-Dungeness crab
-shrimp
-salmon fillets in chunks
There is a very good online history project about cioppino
called History of Cioppino – The Kitchen Project. This site documents where the editors
obtained their information and recipes.
Its website address varies, but you can find it with this
information. It appears that Jean
Andersen, who wrote The Food of Portugal is the main editor.
Cioppino is great with toasted baguettes, panisse with
tahini sauce (chickpea bars with sesame seed sauce. Chickpeas are full of iron. I like sparkling water like San Pellegrino,
Badoit, or Perrier (for the Roland Garros crowd) with cioppino.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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