Name: Cacciucco (Tuscan Fish Stew)
Yield: Serves 6 to 8
Cuisine: Italy
Ingredients: 1.8 kg/4 lb assorted fish in varying sizes including some of the following: hake, monkfish, whiting, scorpion fish, moray eel, conger eel, John Dory, cleaned and gutted; about 1 litre/1¾ pints/4 cups simmering fish or vegetable stock, for basting and diluting; 450 g/1 lb octopus and cuttlefish or squid, cleaned; sea salt and ground black pepper; 250 ml/8 fl oz/1 cup dry white wine; 1 onion, chopped; 1 carrot, chopped; 150 ml/¼ pint/⅔ cup extra virgin olive oil; 1 dried red chilli, finely chopped; 4 garlic cloves, 3 chopped and 1 halved; 1 celery stick, chopped; a handful of fresh flat leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped; 15 small, thin slices crusty bread; 900 g/2 lb ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped; 12 large raw prawns/shrimp, peeled and deveined

Preparation info

Serves
6 to 8

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

The Italian Regional Cookbook

By Valentina Harris

Published 2017

About

The story behind this Tuscan fish stew from Livorno concerns a fisherman’s wife whose husband was lost at sea during a storm. Left alone with many children to feed, she spent the little money she had to buy fish for a soup called cacciucco, adding to the fish the few basic ingredients she had in her kitchen. So successful was the recipe that she managed to find work as a cook. To commemorate her, the soup is kept simple. Although it may vary slightly, it must contain at least five varieties