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serves 8

Sailors’ Shellfish Stew

Cioppino is a regional dish from the San Francisco Bay Area. In the days when fishing fleets plied the cold waters off San Francisco, fishermen would return and use the scraps from their hauls to make a delicious stew, which they called cioppino. A quick check with any fishing community will tell you they all have some kind of soup or stew made with bits and leftovers. This one shows its Italian influences in the garlic, tomato, basil, and oregano. In San Francisco they serve this with crusty sourdough bread, which you can purchase in most areas of the country. If you can’t find sourdough, a crusty French or Italian loaf sops up the flavorful juices just as well.

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium green bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped

1½ teaspoons dried oregano

1½ teaspoons dried basil

1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1½ cups white wine

One 28- to 32-ounce can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped

3 tablespoons tomato paste

One 8-ounce bottle clam juice

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 large Dungeness crab or 4 large king crab legs, cracked and cut into bite-size pieces (see savvy)

2 lobster tails, split and cut into 1-inch chunks

1 pound sea bass, cut into 1-inch chunks

¾ pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

24 littleneck clams, shells scrubbed

½ cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley for garnishing

heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, bell pepper, oregano, basil, and red pepper flakes and sauté until the onion is softened, about 3 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the wine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan, and bring to a boil. Reduce by half.

transfer the contents of the skillet to the insert of a 5- to 7-quart slow cooker. Stir in the tomatoes, tomato paste, clam juice, bay leaf, and pepper. Cover and cook on low for 5 hours. Add the crab, lobster, sea bass, shrimp, and clams.

cover and cook on low for 1 hour, until the shrimp are pink and the clams have opened. Discard the bay leaf and any clams that have not opened. Carefully stir the stew, being careful not to break up the sea bass chunks.

serve the stew garnished with the parsley.

serves 8

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seafood savvy

The shells from the seafood add flavor, and I recommend that you cut them with kitchen shears so that they are easier to dig into when served.

Seafood Jambalaya

Jambalaya is a Cajun rice dish that is the perfect one-pot meal. It’s not so much a soup as an explosion of rice, vegetables, spices, seafood, and spicy sausage. I love to serve this to a crowd—it’s simple to get the base ready to go, add the rest of the ingredients, and let the slow cooker work its magic. Serve the jambalaya directly from the slow cooker with an assortment of hot sauces on the side.

1 pound andouille sausage or polish kielbasa, cut into ½-inch rounds

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 medium green bell peppers, finely chopped

4 stalks celery, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried basil

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

One 14- to 15-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with their juice

10 cups chicken broth

1½ cups raw converted rice

2 pounds cleaned mixed shellfish such as shrimp, oysters, clams, crab, and crawfish

6 green onions, finely chopped for garnishing

Assorted hot sauces for serving

cook the sausage in a large skillet over high heat until it renders some fat and begins to color.

transfer the sausage to the insert of a 5- to 7-quart slow cooker. Add the onion, bell peppers, celery, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, oregano, basil, and black and cayenne peppers to the same skillet and sauté until the onion is beginning to turn golden, 5 to 7 minutes.

add the tomatoes and cook until some of the liquid evaporates, 3 to 4 minutes.