Name: Buridda (Fish and Seafood Stew)
Yield: Makes 6 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 3½ pounds/1½ kilos assorted pieces of white or pink firm-fleshed fish fillets (such as monkfish, hake, cod, dentex, grouper, tilapia, bream), carefully washed, dried, and cut into pieces about 2 inches/5 cm wide; Ligurian extravirgin olive oil; Sea salt; 2 cloves garlic, with the green heart removed, minced; 2¼ pounds/1 kilo onions, peeled and sliced very thin; 1 pound ½ kilo assorted seafood (such as shrimp removed from its shell, baby octopus, cuttlefish; but not shellfish such as lobster, crab, mussels, or clams), all thoroughly washed or rinsed; Freshly ground black pepper; 1 pound/½ kilo ripe plum tomatoes, washed and cut into cubes; 4 sprigs fresh Italian (flat) parsley, minced; ¾ cup/6 ounces/1 glass/85 ml dry white wine, preferably Ligurian; 2 sprigs fresh oregano, minced (or 2 small pinches dried oregano)

Preparation info

Makes
6
servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Recipes from Paradise

By Fred Plotkin

Published 1997

About

Buridda is often said to be the oldest way to cook fish in Liguria. While there is no absolute way to document this, I would think that simple frying or grilling of one type of fish would have occurred before the more complicated task of combining various fish. Also, the typical buridda preparation includes tomatoes, which have only appeared with any regularity in the Ligurian kitchen in the last two centuries. Nonetheless, buridda does have a place of honor in Liguria