No one knows for certain just where cioppino originated.
We do know cioppino (chuh-PEE’-no) first arrived at the docks in San Francisco by way of fishermen, many from Genoa, Sicily and Portugal, whose mainstay on their boats was a wonderful soupy concoction of tomatoes, onions, garlic and fish of any and all kinds, which were their “catch of the day.”
According to folk wisdom, on each dock was a huge soup pot, and the tender of the pot would call out to the boats carrying in their catch of that day, “chip-ini” — chip in with some of their catch to the soup pot. Thus was the name “cioppino” derived.
The pot might hold crab, shrimp, scallops, mussels, clams, squid and halibut, among many other species that were part of that day’s bounty. Anyone was welcome to the cioppino from that pot.
Dino Stagnaro, son of Robert Stagnaro of the Santa Cruz Stagnaro family, recalls that in the 1950s, many of the Italian families living above the cliffs on West Cliff drive had fish cooking in pots in their front yards.
Here in this valley, making cioppino can become a tradition for your Christmas Eve dinner, as it has been for the Gourmet Dinner Club’s newest members, Paula and Chriss Tarantino.
Here’s the story, as told by Chriss:
From Boston to Felton (with places in between)
My wife Paula and I recently moved from Florida to Felton to work for WyoTech as a high school admissions representative. We joined the Gourmet Dinner Club because of our passion for fine dining and as a way to meet local people with similar interests.
My family’s background is rooted in fishing and the restaurant business in Boston. My great uncle Gasparo (“Jasper”) left Boston in the ’30s for San Francisco, where he opened a restaurant, Tarantino’s, on Fisherman’s Wharf.
Today, Tarantino’s is one of the finest restaurants on the wharf.
On one of my uncle’s visits to Boston, he prepared this wonderful dish he called cioppino for his contribution to our traditional “feast of the seven fishes” Christmas Eve dinner. Seven different fish dishes were prepared by different family members, honoring “the vigil,” the seven days before the birth of Jesus Christ. This was mainly a Southern Italian tradition.
There was always a great deal of arguing at these dinners among my father and uncles, from baseball to politics. The homemade wine would flow from gallon jugs while my mother’s kitchen was filling with appetizers, like baked smelts and butterfly shrimp. Bacala (codfish) salad and spaghetti with squid, including the tentacles, were the main course. Bodies of the squid were filled with a bread-and-cheese concoction. Nothing was wasted in our Italian home.
It was into this kitchen that I one year brought my Jewish girlfriend, Marcy, whom Nana, my grandmother, had insisted I invite. I am sure Marcy had never experienced anything like it before. If she wasn’t panicked by the noise and confusion, she certainly was when Nana put the bowl containing the squid with its tentacles before her. We witnessed Marcy’s expression go from confusion to terror. With the removal of the tentacles from her plate, at least we were able to coax her into sampling the filled bodies, which she thoroughly enjoyed.
Join me this year and prepare cioppino during the holidays. You will be happy you did.
— Chriss Tarantino
Colly Gruczelak, a Ben Lomond resident, loves people and loves to cook. Contact her at cz****@sb*******.net.
CIOPPINO A LA JASPER TARANTINO
Servings: 4
Finely dice:
4 garlic cloves
1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper
1 leek, white only
3 green onions, including tops.
Sauté the above in 3 tablespoons olive oil.
Add:
One 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, including juice.
One 8-ounce can tomato paste
¼ teaspoon thyme
1 bay leaf
Cover and simmer two to three hours
Add:
2 cups white wine
Salt or pepper to taste
Layer in 8-quart pot:
2 uncooked lobsters, split in half, cleaned and cracked
2 Dungeness crabs, cooked, cleaned and cracked
4 large scallops, uncooked
8 large shrimp, uncooked
1 pound cod fillet
16 little-neck clams, uncooked, in shells, scrubbed clean
(Any shellfish in this list can be substituted for another.)
Pour sauce over fish. Bring to a high simmer for 15 minutes.
Serve in large bowls with garlic sourdough French bread.
(Recipe from Chriss and Paula Tarantino, Felton)
