What is more classic than french fish stew. While this is not authenticate by any stretch, it tastes great and captures the spirit of Bouillabaisse.
Most of the cooking time goes into making the soup base while the final cooking of the seafood is only ten minutes or so. While hardly tricky, it is important to create a seafood cooking time schedule based on your particular seafood. Our role of thumb is 9 minutes for mussles, 7 minutes for a firm white fish like halibut, 4 minutes for shrimp and 3 minutes for scallops.
4TblsOlive Oil
1mdYellow Onion (peeled and chopped)
1smallBulb Of Fennel (trimmed and sliced)
1largeTomato (peeled , seeded and chopped)
OrangePeel
1/3tspSaffron Threads (soaked in 2 Cups boiling water)
1/2btlDry White Whine (Chardonnay works well)
2x8ozBottles Clam Juice
1tspDried Thyme
1tspSalt
1/2tspPepper
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Seafood:
1/2PoundMussles
1/3PoundFresh Shrimp (in the shell)
1/2PoundScallops
2/3PoundFirm White Fish (Halibut is great)
1- Soak the saffron in 2 cups of boiling water.
2- Add the shrimp shells (will provide flavor for the stock) and both bottles of clam juice to a saucepan and simmer for 10 minutes.
3- Heat olive oil in a dutch oven and saute the onion. Then add the fennel and cook until softened.
4- Add the tomato to the dutch oven and strain in the clam juice / shrimp shell liquid (discarding the shrimp shells).
5- Add the white wine, saffron-water, orange peel, thyme, salt and pepper and bring to a simmer for 10-15 minutes.
6- Each type of seafood requires a different cooking time. Write down how many minutes each type of seafood will require to cook. Start a countdown timer set to the seafood with the longest time (typically the mussels at 9 minutes). As the timer counts down, add each additional seafood with that time remaining.
7- When the timer chimes done, turn off the heat and wait for 90 seconds and then serve.