Cioppino Recipe

Hey. Here is my cioppino (cha-pee-no) recipe. For those who don't know cioppino is an Italian seafood stew. This recipe should feed around 8-12 people depending on how much seafood you use.

-2 medium onions, diced

- 2-3 garlic Cloves, diced

- one bunch parsley, rough chop

-1 cup fish/seafood stock (clam juice works fine)

-2 cups canned diced tomatoes with juice. (Italian style is fine, but watch you seasoning)

-2-3 Bay leaves

-1 teaspoon dried thyme

-1 teaspoon dried oregano

-1 teaspoon basil ( I like fresh)

-1 tablespoon crushed red pepper(optional)

- 1 Tablespoon Fresh Tarragon (rough chop also optional)

- 1 & 1/2 cup red wine(white if you must)

- 1/2 to 1 cup of butter (if you are on a diet 1/2 cup)

Okay, this is the base. Start with a large pot over medium to low heat and melt butter. Add onion, garlic and parsley. Saute until onion is soft and translucent. Add tomato, stock, thyme, basil, oregano, bay leaves, crushed red pepper and wine. Salt and Pepper to taste. Reserve Tarragon until you decide to serve the stew. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cover and let simmer for twenty minutes. At this point you can save the base for about three days in the fridge.

For the fish you will add about 7 pounds of various seafood. Remember, you are feeding a lot of people. You can try things like Clams, mussels, shrimp, crab, monkfish( the poor mans lobster), swordfish, halibut, salmon, scallops, I think you get the drift.

Here is a standard line up of seafood and how to finish this cioppino.

- 12 clams(rinsed)

-12 mussels ( cleaned/ de-bearded)

- 1 & 1/2 pound each monkfish, mahimahi, shrimp(deveined) and bay scallops(cleaned)

*make sure to cut the fish filets into bite size chunks*

After the twenty minutes of simmering uncover and add clams. Cook for two minutes then add mussels and cook for 1 minute. Add monkfish and MahiMahi and cook for another two minutes. Add shrimp and scallops and cook another three minutes or so. Okay everything should be done. Now toss in your tarragon stir re-season with salt and pepper and serve. Discard any bay leaves you run across. This Cioppino is great with a baguette and some salad.

- Good luck and Cheers!

The Ides of March....

Hey to you all. Thanks for the support.

So, The Executive Sous is out of town for a couple of day's. That put's me into the "right hand man" position at work. All I can say is that my Executive Chef's phone is Annoying. I think he is a Jimmy Buffet Fan. Weird, because he's French. Anyway, getting ready for St. Patty's day. I found out today that the members could care less. Great! So, I am running the same old boring corned beef and cabbage plate all day instead of the killer idea's I came up with. Okay, I am not bitter.

The rest of my day was good. Lunch was pretty quite, it usually is when we put out the "yada-yada" buffet. Beef brisket, mashed potato, veggies, salad and dessert. I don't know if it is old people that love the buffet or if people could just care less and will eat anything when they're hungry. Anyway, it gave me plenty of time to start a prep list for menu change on thursday and pick out my specials for the night. I ran the boneless short rib, veal scaloppine(sold it out) and cioppino(tomato based, italian seafood stew). We have a few shorty's left. We only sold one cioppino. I let "Juice" cook it. I think I need to show him one. Ya Know, it always looks better in my head! I'll post my cioppino recipe tomorrow. It is easy. Plus you get to put whatever seafood you have available in the pot.

Funny little story. We some how ended up with two cases of parsley. Now, if you work or have worked in the biz you know how much parsley I am talking about. If you haven't, then think of a moving box that you would put books in and fill it up, now double it. Yeah, A lot of parsley. So, for the past three day's or so I have been chopping it up. Well, today I made some parsley/walnut pesto(good stuff) for the pasta special and decided to do fried parsley and calamari for the tapas. That, got rid of the first case. This afternoon as the Chef is getting ready to put out the "yada-yada" stuff he looks up and says "Do you have any chopped parsley?". Maybe that's only funny to me. I know that everyone else in the kitchen just started grinning because everything except dessert for the past two days past through a shower of parsley.

Pictures are still forth coming. As well as an interesting story. Cheers.

The usual...

Hi, nothing big today. Running good specials, boneless short rib and veal scaloppine. The upstairs kitchen had a massive lobster night. No left overs except fish. Looks like it goes on my market price list. Pretty sweet, we get really good fresh fish. Running arctic char, pacific rock fish and some lake superior white fish. The char is a lot like salmon.

Other than that we are getting ready for the spring menu change. Everybody in my kitchen is looking forward to getting the taco's off the menu. They sold just enough to be a big pain in the neck. We aren't changing much but it should be good to get us through the season.

Alright. I should have some pictures up soon. Cheers.

A day in the life

Hey, this might get a little disjointed. I have just finished day 11 of 11 in a row lunch/dinner services. I feel very scattered. Day One, was monthly inventory with Marty who does all the employee, budget, payroll and what not. That actually went pretty okay from what I remember. The rest of my 11 days consisted of daily sandwich specials, Nightly vegetables of the day, tapas specials, pasta specials, and specials of the night. Quite a few of the ingredients are given to me by my boss the executive chef.

As I have stated, I am a working chef so technically I am what you might call a chef de cuisine. I run one of two kitchens where I work. I am in charge of the restaurant that the members eat at on a regular basis. The Executive Chef runs the other kitchen, on top of all the executive chef things he does. His kitchen cooks special dinners and events. Well, I get all the excess food from said events. Which leaves me (one might think) with a host of options for my specials and tapas and pastas. The thing is, that these "Dinners" and "Events" I speak of usually have a theme. So I get stuck with items like five spiced duck breast, a mixture of hummus and baba ganoush, and enough calamari to choke a giant squid....pun intended.

Yes, I run fried calamari because nobody at my restaurant orders tapas. It's a country club. Don't ask, I haven't figured out why the members don't order apps. According to "Juice", my grill man, "starters" have never been a big deal. I am saving the hummus mixture for a lunch special. The duck breast didn't get ordered the first time around in the main kitchen so I tried anything I could think of to get away from the five spice asian thing but what kills that flavor..... yeah, BBQ duck quesadilla. Really, it sold okay. It tasted pretty damn good too. By he way, calamari freezes really well. It is no wonder why I like Chopped so much.?!

This is my first time working at a country club. Very different. You see, at a real restaurant you serve people the same plates over and over again. No big deal, you get fast at pumping out the same ten, twelve dishes. Sure you get a pain in the ass every once in a while with dressing on the side or no cheese or no whatever. At a country club the "custumers" are members. These people pay for everything you see. The golf course, the gates, the valets, the chairs, the lights, the houses, the drinks, the food you order and are preparing for them, the wage you get paid, all of it. So, when the members want the salad chopped as fine as parsley...... yeah, we do that. Ya see, we are rarely crammed with 100 people. It is more like 30 members right on top of each other and they all want the food they just ordered..... right now. Okay not all the members are the "right now!" kind of people. However, they are all very particular about what they want to eat and how they want it prepared. I certainly am not complaining about this. Really, after cooking the same food night in and night out for three years it is nice to have to change gears and make special order after special order. Okay, not the parsley fine chopped salad, but a lot of the other things are great.

Hello....

Hey, I was just outside looking at the stars and thinking you might like to read about life as a working chef. Not the glamourous life of a Chef on the go, traveling the world. The real down to earth reality of the job. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do. Cooking, for me is a true passion and pleasure. However, the other side of my career is another story. The hiring, the firing, the paper work, the coworkers all the stuff that isn't cooking, creating and discovering what I love about food. I hope you enjoy.