Poor Mans Cioppino

Better than a slice of pizza

I worked a few jobs to get through Cal in Berkeley. I started at the campus cafeteria doing food prep, until I sliced open my finger while cutting bagels, passed out from all the blood and flopped around like a fish out of water.¹

So they made me a hot runner. That’s where you do laps from the kitchen to the buffet line with piping hot trays of food to swap for empty ones. You get burned a lot in that gig; ok I got burned a lot.²

Eventually, I worked my way up to Hofbrau server, carving up roast beef and brisket. While a questionable decision to put a knife back in my hand, I did escape the cafeteria grind with all my fingers.

By sophomore year I could program and I used all those fingers to get a job at the Astronomy department.³

No knives in the Astronomy Department; the worst thing that happened to me was falling asleep in front of my boss after an all-nighter.

The money I made often went in my tummy: a dollar bought a fat cheese slice at Blondies, a buck-fifty got me a midnight Kielbasa at Top Dog with all the sauerkraut you could pile on, and two bucks got me a bag full of donut holes from King Pin.

Then — a food epiphany.

My friend Joe’s older sister — she was a lawyer — came to visit from out of town. She took him out over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. Joe came back a changed man with stories of food that was better than the greasiest, fattest slice of Blondies pepperoni. They went to Scomas.

A San Francisco institution, Scoma’s is down at the end of a wharf that tee’s off the chowder-in-a-bread-bowl slurping tourist crowd at Fishermans Wharf.

So we saved our money and we went over the Bay Bridge. Scoma’s became our annual tradition after finals at the end of the year.

Back then Scoma’s didn’t take reservations and the small lobby was always packed, overflowing out the door. They wanted you waiting at the bar sipping Vodka martinis, but we needed all our money for the main course, and waited outside.⁴

Once, when the host asked our name, she mistakenly heard Conrad over the din. We let it go — close enough. We went outside on the wharf to wait but rather than the usual hour, they called us right away. From then on we were always Conrad and we got seated ahead of everyone else.

Joe always got the Poor Man’s Cioppino. Poor my ass — it was the most expensive thing on the menu! I always got the cheapest thing on the menu — Petrale Sole. It was good, served with lemon and capers and fresh sourdough bread.

But the Cioppino … was a whole thing. It came out steaming in a metal bowl with clams and mussels and crab legs poking out and the broth was just perfect for dunking that sourdough bread. They brought a special companion bowl — for the shells. Joe always made a show of how full he was after cleaning the bowl.

Of course I wanted to try it.

Fifteen years later — when I had a job that paid more than the Astronomy department— I was searching for something to make for Christmas dinner and I gave Cioppino a shot.

My first attempt was messy. Cioppino is ‘poor mans’ because it’s a fisherman’s stew. You put in whatever fish you have left over from the catch. Cioppino originated down on the docks down at Fisherman’s Wharf, where a staple catch is Dungeness Crab.

I got live crabs.

I described my mistake back in April when I shared my Pancake recipe:

… Cioppino originated on the docks as a poor mans seafood stew and so it’s become our Christmas day tradition. Spicy tomato base full of fresh Dungeness crab, mussels and clams. Serve with chunky sourdough bread. I’ve been working on my Cioppino skills for over 20 years.

The first year, I bought live crabs and that was traumatic for everyone. R was a toddler and on the drive home we could hear the crabs trying to escape the bag in the backseat. When we got home, JFran took R to the park, leaving me with stern instructions that there were to be no live crustaceans in the house when she returned.

Didn’t do that again.

My second mistake was going big on chili flakes. It went down just like Frank Costanza’s War. ⁵

I have it pretty dialed in now.

Most of the stuff that goes into the pot

This year I wrote it down:

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Cioppino — big pot, serves ~12

Ingredients

Base

• Olive Oil

• 1 large white onion, chopped

• 2–3 shallots, chopped

• 1 fennel bulb, white part only, finely chopped

• 6–8 cloves garlic, chopped

• 4 Tbsp tomato paste or 4 generous squirts

• 2 large cans (28oz) whole peeled plum tomatoes, lightly broken up

• 1 bottle dry red wine - nothing fancy, Merlot is good

• 4 bottles clam juice

Seasoning

• 3 bay leaves

• Tbsp dried oregano

• Tbsp dried thyme

• Tbsp dried basil

• Red pepper flakes - just a pinch

• Bunch of fresh parsley, chopped - handful in the broth, rest for serving

• Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Seafood

• 1 lb small clams - littlenecks or Manila

• 1 lb mussels, cleaned

• 2 or 3 cracked crabs

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Prep

1. Sauté Onion, Garlic, Shallots and Fennel in a couple generous tablespoons of Olive Oil until the onion is translucent, 5-10 minutes.

2. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, clam juice, wine and seasoning. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a gentle simmer for about an hour. About 30 minutes in, add salt & pepper to taste along with a generous handful of the chopped parsley and a tsp of sugar to cut the acidity of the tomatoes.

3. Took my nieces nearly an entire showing of Elf to collect the crab meat— tools and bowls needed. Clean any fuzz off the mussels and clams, rinse and place in a bowl of cool water.

4. About 30 minutes before it’s time to eat, fish out the bay leaves and drop the drained clams and mussels in. Bring back to a simmer and after 10 minutes pick out any shells that don’t open.

5. Add in the crab meat. Reheat gently for another 10 minutes.

6. Ladle into big bowls, top with fresh parsley, and serve with your favorite bread.

This halves easily and Cioppino is forgiving so don’t sweat exact measurements or ingredients, taste as you go and adjust to make it yours.

Happy Holidays!

1. I stared dumbly down at my gushing finger but I didn’t actually pass out until one of the ladies who worked there poured some noxious fluid on my gaping wound. When the smell hit me, that’s when I went down. I opened my eyes to the entire kitchen staff staring down at me. Later, my friend told me my eyes rolled back and I was twitching.

2. Steam burns mainly. You set down the full tray, pry out the empty one while trying to avoid the whoosh of steam coming up and then swap. 40 years later this is the same setup you find at Whole Food’s hot bar.

3. Written in FORTRAN: FORmula TRANslation; what most everything science-y was written in back then. We learned on Pascal; coding projects were mostly in C/C++. COBOL or Common Business-Oriented Language was the business wonder twin of FORTRAN; never wrote a line of it.

4. If you’ve ever heard of Herb Caen, the famous SF Chronicle columnist — this was his drink and yes he went to Scoma’s.

5. David Lynch directed this scene!