Recipe: Seafood Stock (for Cioppino)
Niles makes a killer cioppino. Cioppino is a hearty seafood and tomato base stew that originated in the Italian immigrant community in San Francisco around the late 1800s. Cioppino is the kind of dish that’s emblematic of one of my very favorite kinds of Food Stories. It’s a dish that came about because of a meeting of different cultures and traditions, a migrant population adapting old recipes to a new location and new ingredient base. It’s also absolutely delicious!
Niles was born in the bay area, and grew up with this dish, and in the two decades that he and I have been together, he’s made it many times. It evolves and changes and gets better every time. We had some friends over last weekend (hi, Theo and Mary!!) to test some cocktail recipes, and Niles made a huge pot of cioppino for us, and it was his very best yet.
It’s a long recipe, though! So we’ll start with the day ahead of time, when Niles made his own seafood stock for the base.
Phew! Even just the seafood stock ended up being a longer recipe than I anticipated. You do not have to make your own seafood stock for cioppino, but it’s pretty easy to do, and you can make it as rich and decadent as you want.
Tune in next week for the actual cioppino recipe using this stock as a base! If you’d like a preview, here’s a recipe comic I made of Niles’s cioppino from TWELVE YEARS AGO. The new recipe will be much more complex and evolved, but this will make for a fun comparison! (Also, I can’t believe I was using “Let’s Make” as a recipe comics title all the way back in 2013!)
Upcoming Things:
I will be exhibiting at CAKE Chicago in June! I will also be at the Wisconsin Book Festival Fall Celebration in Madison in October!
Hey Sarah, how’s the book going:
UGH. OKAY. Here’s the deal. The publisher asked for a version of the manuscript to send to the proofreaders (with at least pencils of each page) by early July, so I’m adjusting how I’m working on this. Instead of drawing outlines and color for 10-12 pages a week, I’m trying to complete outlines only for 22-24 pages a week. Then I should be able to turn that version of the manuscript in by the very end of June, and spend July and August just working on colors. It’s an adjustment, but it’s fine. It’s probably better to work that way anyway, and I did manage to outline 24 pages last week, so I’m still on target.
What I’m into lately:
I gotta be honest, I DFN’d Staircase in the Woods. It had all the elements that should have worked for me, but I just wasn’t connecting with it. Back to the library you go, to wait for a woman of less discriminating taste. Anyway, I’m just starting Birds Art Life by Kyo Maclear for my book club. It’s a memoir about urban birdwatching, which I also enjoy! I’m a big fan of the Merlin app; it has a great sound ID that I use all the time to identify bird calls near me. I’m also listening to the audiobook of A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, one of my very favorite horror novels of all time. I’ve read it several times now, and I notice excellent new details every time.
What Toki’s into lately:
Sara Varon got Toki this adorable little catnip-filled toy and he’s been happily demolishing it.
