🇮🇹 Italy · Marche (Ancona)
Brodetto all'anconetanaAncona fish stew
Ancona's brodetto: thirteen kinds of fish and shellfish added in order of cooking time to onion and garlic in oil, soured with vinegar only (no wine), with peeled tomatoes or passata and parsley, shaken rather than stirred and poured over toasted bread.
Origin and history
Ancona's brodetto began, like the others of the Adriatic, as the fishermen's way of cooking the catch that would not sell, and Italy's tourism board calls it the oldest recipe of local tradition and the one that has changed least. Its rule is thirteen kinds of fish and shellfish, a number that tradition links either to the thirteen at the Last Supper or to the thirteen spouts of Ancona's Fontana del Calamo. It is soured with vinegar only, never wine.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 2 h 30 min
- Hands-on
- 1 h 15 min
Ingredients
- 400 g14 oz 1. cuttlefish (seppie), cleaned, cut in strips
- 200 g7 oz 2. squid (calamari), cleaned, cut in strips or rings
- 200 g7 oz 3. baby octopus (moscardini), cleaned, left whole
- 1 large or 2 small 4. crab (granchio), boiled for 8 minutes in salted water beforehand, then halved
- 6 5. mantis shrimp (canocchie), sides of the shell snipped with scissors
- 300 g10 oz 6. mussels (cozze), scrubbed, beards pulled off
- 300 g10 oz 7. clams (vongole), soaked 1 hour in salted water to purge sand
- 200 g7 oz 8. sea snails (lumachine di mare, garagoli), purged, boiled for 10 minutes beforehand and drained
- 6 9. large prawns (mazzancolle), shell on
- 300 g10 oz 10. monkfish tail (coda di rospo), boned, cut in chunks
- 250 g9 oz 11. smooth-hound (palombo), skinned, cut in chunks
- 4 12. red mullet (triglie), filleted
- 2 small 13. sole (sogliole), filleted
- 150 ml2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 golden onion, finely chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 100 mlscant 1/2 cup white wine vinegar (half a glass), never wine
- 600 g1.3 lb peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
- 1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped, divided
- dried chilli, a small piece; optional, not in the old recipe
- salt and black pepper, to taste
- 12 slices wholemeal or country bread, toasted, to serve
Method
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1. Clean all thirteen kinds of seafood, fillet the mullet and sole, bone the monkfish and skin the palombo, so that nobody meets a bone at the table; keep each kind in its own bowl in the fridge.
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2. Boil the crab for about 8 minutes and the sea snails for 10 minutes in salted water, drain and set aside.
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3. In a wide earthenware pan (tegame di coccio) or a heavy shallow pan, warm the olive oil over medium-low heat and soften the onion and garlic for 8 to 10 minutes, without browning.
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4. Turn the heat to high and pour in the vinegar; let it bubble for 1 to 2 minutes, until the sharp smell eases.
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5. Add half the parsley, the chilli if using and the crushed tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and simmer gently for 15 minutes.
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6. Add the cuttlefish and squid, cover and cook over low heat for 25 to 30 minutes, until a knife slides easily into the cuttlefish.
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7. Add the baby octopus and cook for 10 minutes more.
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8. Lay the boiled crab and the mantis shrimp on top and cook for 10 minutes.
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9. Add the mussels, clams and boiled sea snails, cover and cook over very low heat for 5 minutes, until most of the shells have opened.
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10. Add the prawns, monkfish and palombo, then lay the mullet and sole fillets on top, the most delicate last.
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11. Cover and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, until all the fish is opaque. Do not stir from now on: hold the pan by its handles and move it gently now and then so the pieces stay whole. If the sauce gets too thick, add a few spoonfuls of hot water.
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12. Turn off the heat, scatter over the remaining parsley and let the brodetto rest, covered, for 10 minutes.
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13. Put toasted bread in each wide bowl and serve a little of every kind of seafood on it with plenty of sauce.
Notes
- How it differs from the parent: the brodetto page gives a plain everyday brodetto, with no fixed fish count, no vinegar or wine and only a little tomato. This is the full Ancona form: exactly thirteen kinds of fish and shellfish, including crab, sea snails and baby octopus, all filleted or boned before cooking, soured with vinegar alone.
- Vinegar, not wine, is the Ancona rule; the brodetti north of Monte Conero are deglazed with white wine. Tomato goes in with a light hand, so the fish leads; Ancona's tourist office gives a version with tomato purée in place of peeled tomatoes.
- The fish changes with the season and the market. If you cannot find sea snails or crab, use more clams and an extra kind of firm fish such as gurnard (gallinella), scorpionfish (scorfano) or John Dory, so the count stays at thirteen.
- With so much fish, many cooks use two pans, dividing the sauce and the seafood between them.
- Bread is not optional: the brodetto is meant to be mopped up. In Ancona it is drunk with a Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi.
- Other town styles have their own pages: Fano (brodetto/fano), San Benedetto (brodetto/sambenedettese), Vasto (brodetto/vastese) and Porto Recanati (brodetto/porto-recanati).
Adapted from Tiziana Dazzi, Scatti di Gusto, Brodetto di pesce all'anconetana, la ricetta originale and Ancona Tourism, Fish recipes: brodetto all'anconetana.
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.