Cioppino Party
A group of friends and I started a group cooking party in 2011 or 2012. It’s changed participants over the years and some of the themes have been Pasta, Pizza, Kabobs and we’ve done Tamales and Cioppino multiple times. Cioppino lends itself well to a group effort, you can assign an item to each person to bring, or as I did last time write a list (it was the equivalent of the recipe) and let each person/group claim an item. I was out of town at the time, so I wrote numbered list and texted it out to the group asking to reply all with the item chosen. In a short time, all of the items were claimed, and we had a party in progress. NOTE: All of the seafood items can be whatever is fresh at the time, there are no hard, fast rules for what to include. I try to include shellfish, bi-vales, firm fish, crustaceans, and soft fish if you like.
1 # Shrimp
1 # firm fish
1 # Scallops
3 lobster tails or 2 whole lobsters (1/2 lobster per person)
1 # clams
1 # mussels
3 bottles clam juice
1 large or 2 medium onions diced
1 cup celery stalks and leaves diced
1 bunch flat leaf parsley
2 28 oz cans diced tomato
1 bunch fresh basil
1 heard garlic
2 sticks salted butter
2 loaves Boudin Sourdough Bread
1 qt veggie or chicken stock
1 bottle dry white wine ( use 1 cup and drink the rest)
I grouped these items to what I thought was equitable and made some of the things staples, like herbs, veg and stocks. I actually had a hand made list that I took a picture of and sent to my peeps, they picked a number related to the items and claimed it. They replied to all the group so everyone know who was bringing what.
On the day of the party everyone got here about 2 hours before we planned to eat. We had appetizers like brie w/hot honey on crackers, fruit, cappicola, prosciutto, port salud and pate.
When everyone arrived and we started snacking we checked to see if all the items were prepped and ready to ad to the pot. If not, we made it so and lined everything up in reverse order of cooking length.
We began as usual with the onions, celery and lastly garlic. We sauteed the first two ingredients (you can add fennel or leeks if you want to) and we added the garlic right before the wine went in. Then the tomato and the pot was brought back up to heat. Then we added the clam juice and/or stock and brought it to a simmer. The seafood went in in this order with about 5 minutes in between (you need to judge this for yourself): lobster and crabs, clams and mussels, firm fish then soft fish with us lastly adding the basil and fresh chopped Italian flat leaf parsley. Any unopened clams and mussels were removed and the soup ladeled into wide bowls, served with hot bread and soft butter on the side. A green salad and sorbet makes the whole meal easy.
