A Seafood Lover's Dream (Cioppino) | Chef Jean-Pierre

Well, hello there friends, another fantastic show today. Cioppino, a beautiful seafood dish. Stay tuned, I'm going to show you how to make it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video, subscribe to the channel, and ring that bell. Stay tuned, we're going to make it together. Well, hello there friends. Wow, look at this. Not talking about mise en place. That's a lot of things. Look at this. I've been out here for a little while. Now, this is not something we're going to do if the kids are hungry. Let's make some cioppino, okay? It's a little more prep required. Obviously, we got to get that ready, but that's an awesome thing to do for a dinner party. You can have it all ready in advance, and the friends comes in, pour the white wine, and have a ball around the cioppino. So, while I'm talking, let me start cooking. I got some onion in there going. Remember, the onion is always number first. Always. Don't forget that, all right? Now, while the onion is cooking, let me talk a little bit about the mise en place, okay? I got fennel. Fennel. Fennel is, how do you describe it? More like a celery with an anise flavor. That's not too bad of a description, actually. This is it. Look at this. Isn't that beautiful? That's a specimen. We got an organic farm here in Florida, and they grow this. Look at this thing. That gorgeous or what? Now, what you do, you cut all this, and then you dice them. You know, I'm making a video right now as we speak about how to cut every vegetable. That's going to be part of it, okay? So, you'll see it. Otherwise, if I start cutting all the things. So, cut the onion first. So, fennel. Peppers. I got those little sweet peppers. If you don't have those, just take a regular bell pepper and cut it in julienne, okay? Again, that's going to be part of the video, right? So, little sweet peppers like that. They're wonderful. I got a scallion. I got the white and the light green of the scallion separate from the green part of the scallion. That we put toward the end. Okay? Then I got jalapenos. A little spicy. Not that spicy, you know, but if you don't really want a spiciness, then don't put it in there. Garlic. Of course, garlic, right? I got basil. Then I'm going to put it in later. Then parsley. And that's the green of the scallion. We're going to put this toward the end, okay? Tomatoes. Chopped tomatoes. I call it tomato concasse. It's when you chop and dice the tomato and peel them. You can chop tomatoes. Don't worry. You'll get cherry tomatoes. Quarter them. Half is perfectly fine. Now, the fish. You put whatever fish you can get, okay? Sometimes it depends where you live. In Florida, we got a lot of fish, but sometimes I get northern fish, too. Okay, salmon. I love salmon, okay? Don't put salmon. Don't put it in. Grouper or any firm fish, okay? Grouper is fabulous. Cod is also good. Mahi. Make sure it's got a beautiful bloodline. I got sea scallops. I got shrimp. U15 shrimp. And I got mussels. Really simple. What is a cioppino? Cioppino is a seafood dish, a seafood stew, that was kind of invented by the – I'm not an historian, okay? So, this is what I – I remember in the 70s, when I first came to America, it was a rage in California. It's Italian chefs that moved to California, then created this. Is it Italian? No, not really. You know, it's not really Italian. In Italy, you order a cioppino. They go, what? In Italy, you order a soup de pesca. In French, you order a soup de poisson. Every country's got different fish stew thing, kind of like whatever it is, right? So, Italian, French, who cares where it comes from? It's very popular in California. I think it was really invented in San Francisco because they have so much seafood over there. But it doesn't matter where it's invented. In Fort Lauderdale, in my restaurant, it was a really great success. When we did it, we also made a French bouillabaisse. And bouillabaisse, you know, you need special fish. You need the rascasse, which is the rockfish, and not exactly accessible to us in Florida. So, I can make a Florida bouillabaisse, which is what I should do, actually. But it's different. Instead of the cioppino, it's cooking white wine and tomato juice. And the bouillabaisse is cooked in a seafood broth, a seafood soup, really. A fish soup. It's cooking a fish soup. All right? So, we continue cooking our peppers. Everything is ready in advance. It has to be, right? Then the white and the light part of the scallion, right? And we're going to put the jalapeno because it's not too hot. I'm going to put it in there. Boom, boom. Now, you can see the value of everything ready in advance, right? Let me look to make sure I'm not doing anything wrong, which would be possible. Yeah, yeah. You watched the channel before, right? You know that sometimes I screw up. I put things in the wrong order. Is this thing going? Yeah, it's going. Garlic. When do you put the garlic? I know a lot of you know that, but some of you may be new to the channel. Welcome. We have so many new people that are coming in and joining the channel. It's fabulous. Garlic goes in just before you're ready to put some liquid. So, garlic comes in. So, that means in a few seconds, we're going to smell it. And at that point, you got a choice. You want to flavor the house, the hair, or you want to flavor the dish. I want to flavor the dish. So, the second I smell it, you know, I think I'm going to put a little more garlic. That's not enough garlic in there, folks. That's a big pot. That's not enough garlic in there. I'm going to put more. I already got some extra chopped garlic in my kitchen. I think I should put a little more garlic. It's going to be mild anyway because it's going to cook here for a long time. It's poaching it. I can start smelling it. I wish you were here. You could start smelling it, too. So, the first liquid we're going to put in so we don't overcook it is white wine. Now, for those of you that don't drink wine, God bless you. You should try. No, really, you should try. It's delicious. For those of you that don't drink wine, don't worry. Use a broth. Use a chicken broth. Use a vegetable broth. I showed you how to make a vegetable broth. If you don't know how to make a vegetable broth, click over there. There's a link somewhere around here. I don't know where it is. I think it's over there. There's a link, and you know how to make it. You notice so far, I haven't done much. We're going to put some salt and pepper in here, some seasoning, right? Because so far, I'm not putting anything with salt, so I've got to season it, right? And the right amount of salt, that's another thing we're going to talk about, friends. I've got to do a video on it. How do we know? When do we know when we have enough salt? Because if you don't have the right amount of salt, you notice sometimes you're cooking something, right? You're putting, you're testing, and you go, ha! Excuse me, I can't taste anything. It's not because you've got COVID or anything. It's because your food is boring, right? And all of a sudden, you're putting a little salt in there, and bam! Wow! It really comes alive. You notice that? It happens to everybody, doesn't it? You're cooking, you're like, ah, what do I need in there? What do I need? And you put just a little bit of salt, and oh my goodness, it really comes alive, right? Well, that's because that's what salt does. Salt is a magic ingredient, my friend. All right, so let's see what we've got here. We've got the wine. We're bringing it to boil. I'm doing a wine reduction. So I'm going to wait a few seconds, friends, because I cannot really put anything in this wine until it comes to boil. But if you remember when you're cooking with wine, you have to bring it to a boil and let it reduce. Unless it's, see if you remember, three wines that you don't need to reduce. Port, Madeira, Marsala. All right? Or the other wine you reduce. All right? So we don't want to make the video too long, so we're going to bring it to boil. And as soon as it's boiling, we're going to put the tomato juice. Tomato juice, yes. Buy the best tomato juice you can afford to buy. But this is how we're going to cook all of our seafood, in the tomato juice, friends. And the white wine, you see? And then we're going to add a little bit of, it's my trick. This brings me back to the Mediterranean. We're going to put a little bit of anise. You could put a little perno, which is an anise flavor if you have it. If you don't have any, put a little anisette. If you don't have that, put a little sambuca. I used to have some sambuca in here, or anisette in here. But I think somebody out there, maybe Antonio, I don't know, somebody, checked it out. Alright, tomato juice. There you go. Now we got some juice in here, friends. Now we're going to put our tomatoes. Chopped tomatoes. Now we're really starting to have some broth to cook things in. And now we're going to start putting in our seafood, friends. Alright, so, the grouper's going to take a little bit longer. Have you bought fish lately? Ridiculous! Holy mackerel, it's so expensive, I couldn't believe it. I mean, I went to the fish store today and I'm looking at grouper, 48 bucks a pound. I said, oh, I want the boat. I don't want the whole fish, I just want two pounds of grouper. Unbelievable, the price of fish today. So here we go. You got to get a firm fish in there, friends. Mahi, beautiful, we got it right here. That's still a reasonable price. Mahi, beautiful mahi. Put it in here. Sea scallop, those come from Maine. They're gorgeous. Beautiful sea scallop from Maine. Put them in here. Now, you know what's going to happen? All of that seafood is going to stop the cooking process. It's going to stop the cooking process. Meaning, then all that cold is going to cool our system, so everything's going to cook. It's going to take longer to cook, but that's okay, we got time. You got time? I got plenty of time. Look, put the shrimp in there. Those are U15. That means there's 15 to a pound. They're cleaned. The tail is on because they look nicer. Imagine how much wonderful flavor you get out of there, right? Wonderful flavor, right? Now, let me clean this up so I don't have a bunch of mess on the counter. And then they're going to yell at me because I'm blocking the camera. Actually, they don't yell. They're very nice. So here we go. So here we go, friends. We're bringing this to boil. You let it cook. Salmon is going to go at the last minute because I don't need to cook it very much, right? What else am I going to put in here? The mussels. When do we put the mussels? When everything is almost ready. Let's talk about the mussels for a second, friends. I hope I got them in here so everybody can see. So if you've seen my—I have a video out there on mussels, how to cook mussels. I think I have a video on YouTube somewhere. I'm not sure. I'm not going to promote it because it's from a long, long time ago. You see a mussel like that, then it's broken. I don't know if you guys can see it, but this is broken. So when it's broken like that, I take it off. You know, I'm not sure about it. It may be a bit dead already, but since it's broken, I can't tell if it's dead or not. Let's find one that's open. Look at this guy right there. It's open. You see? It's open right there. Look. I don't know if you can see it. Well, I hope I can see it, too. There you go. I don't know which camera I'm showing right there. This one? I don't know. You can see it, right? So look. This one over there. There you go. See right there? It's open, right? So you want to ticklish it. Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle. Ticklish it. If it don't close, if it doesn't close when I do this, it's closed. Well, not really. This one did not really close that good, you see? If you ticklish it—get it, get it, wake up! Dude, wake him up! Wake—you got to wake him up. Wake up! If they're still open, when you wake them up, because you got to make a lot of noise, wake up! If they don't close right away, that means they're dead. If they're dead, you got to get rid of them. And if they don't open, get rid of them too. That means they were dead before you put them in the water. I lost the one that was slightly open. That's the one. See, it didn't open. So he'd go, goodbye. Didn't close. The minute they open, right? If they close right away, you know they're fresh. If they don't close right away, like this guy over there, they got hurt, don't bother me. They was probably half way dead, so. You know what, if I was a muscle, I would like to have my last meal with me. I mean, really, right? French chef keep cooking for you. Great. God bless America. Here you go. Now, what do we do with this? We take this, and we put a cover on it. Now, we're going to steam them. The muscle, you steam them, my friend. All right? We steam it until they open. One more thing we're going to put in there. We're going to put a little bit of basil. And you know what we should do? Let's hurry up, because let's take the green of the scallions, right there. Let's take a little bit of chopped parsley, and let's close it, because we want to steam them. Okay, so now, now that I got mess everywhere, because I do have mess everywhere, don't I? We're going to cut the chiffonade of basil. I got basil right there, friends. And what I did is I take the leaves. Got parsley all over my hands. I got the basil leaves, and I got them on top of each other, you see? And what you do, you roll them. Can light them up and smoke them. Oh, no good. Don't smoke the basil. And then you go like this, look. See? And you make what is called chiffonade. You barely move your fingers, you see? You barely, barely move the fingers, you see? And then you can decorate your chopino, or your any seafood dish. You see with this? This is pretty, you see? You do the same when you do a pizza, pasta, and you want to decorate with basil, you see? Look, make sure you roll it nice and tight. And that's called chiffonade. And chiffonade come from the word chiffon in French. And the word chiffon in French means a rag. But in American, in English, chiffon. Chiffon is very fancy, chiffon. What do you think it's made out of? Oh, chiffon. It's very fancy, but in French, chiffon means a rag. So we ragged it. We ragged the basil. All those people that I hear on this channel for the first time, they say, these guys are nuts. Oh, mama mia. And that's okay. All right, what do we got here? They're not opening yet, so I'm not opening this. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna make some garlic crostinis. I'm gonna go over there. I'm gonna get that, I'm gonna cut the crostini right there, you watch. I don't know if the camera has followed me. Boy, they're good. They got me, look at this. Look at this, they got me already, see? I got a baguette, right? And I'm gonna brush the baguette. I'm gonna brush the baguette with the garlic butter that I made. Just garlic, butter, and parsley, right? And I'm gonna do, I'm gonna brush them on. You see, look at this. Look at it, a child could do this. And I'm doing this while this cioppino is cooking. You see, look, you see? So take your time, do it a little nicer than me. I'm doing this fast because cameras are rolling, cioppino is cooking. I don't wanna overcook it, but I think I may, if I'm not careful. Okay, how we doing over there? Okay, we're doing good, we're doing good. I know that everything is gonna be fine. This is delicious, my friend. I hope you like it. And voila, I got the broiler on. All right, I could have done a little more bread, but I'm in a hurry. I'm gonna put them under the broiler, okay, friends? Right there, and I'm going back to cook. Oh boy, don't let me forget it. Don't let me forget it. You watch, I am gonna forget it, I know me. All right, what do we got here? What do we got? We're not ready yet, friends. We're not ready. We're gonna be ready in a little while, but we're not quite ready. See, the shrimps are not cooked yet. So we're gonna wait a few more minutes. It's cooking. I don't want it to overcook. Mussels are still not open. So I'll tell you what we do, folks. I'm gonna keep an eye on my bread so it doesn't burn. I'm gonna continue cooking this, and we'll be back in a couple of minutes. It wouldn't be my cooking channel if I didn't forget something. I forgot the salmon. It's okay, because I said I gotta put it at the end anyway, because I don't like to overcook it. All right, it won't be overcooked. I'll put it at the end. Thank goodness. We'll wait a couple of more minutes for the crostini, and we'll be right back. Okay, friends, everything is done. Salmon is done. Like I said, don't be afraid to put it on Sambuca. For those of you that don't drink, don't worry, don't put it in. You're not gonna miss it. Just a little bit, just a little bit. It's gonna give you a little sweetness, a little anise flavor. You know, like Sambuca, put a pair of no in there, which is a French liqueur, okay? And all we're gonna do now is we're gonna serve ourself a nice serving, friends. And that is it. And let me tell you, as good as it is today, it's just as good tomorrow. So don't be afraid to make some in advance. And all of your seafood, you serve it. Look at this, my friends. Serve it with the crostinis. This is absolutely delicious. Smells amazing. And really, that was not that big of a deal to cook when you really think about it. It was a lot more prep. The cooking time is no big deal. It's a lot more prep than it is actually cooking everything. The prep is what takes a long time, that's all. And then, of course, the broth of it is what makes it so special, you see? The broth is what makes everything so beautiful and so special. And you put as much or as little as you want, right? And then I like to kind of decorate it a little bit by putting my mussels around it, right? And put a shrimp on top. It doesn't really matter where you put them. Just decorate them a little bit, right? And then we take a little bit of our basil chiffonade and put a very little on it, just like this, you see? And all of a sudden, friends, we have ourself a beautiful dinner. Then really, besides the prep time, it's perfect to do for a dinner party, you see? Right there, friends. And you put your crostini right there on the plate and you see, in a minute or two, in three minutes, you just have a fabulous thing. Let me test it to make sure it's delicious. I want to test that broth. You know, I'm going to test it right here. I don't need to test it on my plate. And let's, mm, it's delicious. You can just drink the broth like this. You can test all of the different flavors. All the seafood are releasing an amazing amount of flavor. Believe it or not, the overwhelming flavor is going to be the mussels at the end. They're releasing a liquor when they cook. And all the fish is cooked to perfection. It's wonderful. I hope you make it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video, subscribe to the channel, and ring that bell. Let me tell you, friends, this is... If you like seafood, you're going to be in heaven. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week with another fantastic show.