Monkfish Stew with White Beans

This stew was my dad’s masterpiece, both a standard suppertime fallback and a showstopping crowd-pleaser for guests. Is it a traditional, historic Irish dish? Well, I can guarantee no peasant was brewing it up in a thatched cottage, no matter how close it sat to the coastline. But it is real Irish food in that my extended family across Ireland and America enthusiastically cooks and eats it with great gusto and frequency. And we do eat a lot of monkfish in Ireland—it’s a succulent and meaty