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The dish
What brodetto alla vastese is
The most famous fish stew of the southern Abruzzo coast.
Brodetto alla vastese is the fish stew of Vasto: it is made with many kinds of Adriatic fish, cut into large pieces and cooked in a sauce of tomato and peppers in the traditional earthenware pan, the «tijella».
The fish is never stirred: you shake the pan now and then. It is brought to the table in the pan and eaten with toasted bread dipped in the sauce.
What you need
Ingredients
Serves 4.
- 1.5 kg mixed fish (scorpion fish, gurnard, smooth-hound, monkfish, red mullet, sole)
- 500 g of cuttlefish, squid, mantis shrimp and langoustines
- Optional: mussels and clams
- 500 g ripe or peeled tomatoes
- 1 sweet green pepper
- 2 garlic cloves, parsley
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Salt and chilli
- Slices of toasted country bread
Step by step
Method
- Clean the fish, leave the small ones whole and cut the large ones into steaks; cut cuttlefish and squid into pieces.
- In the earthenware pan warm plenty of oil with the garlic, the pepper in strips and the chilli.
- Add the chopped tomatoes, salt and cook for 10 minutes.
- Lay in first the cuttlefish and squid, then the firmer fish and finally the more delicate fish, mantis shrimp and langoustines.
- Cook over low heat for 20–25 minutes without stirring, shaking the pan now and then; if using mussels and clams, add them in the last few minutes.
- Turn off the heat, sprinkle with parsley and let it rest a few minutes. Serve in the pan with toasted bread.
From our home kitchen
Tips
- The more kinds of fish you use, the tastier the brodetto.
- If the earthenware pan is new, soak it in water overnight before using it.
- Leftover sauce is excellent on spaghetti the next day.
Note: every family in Vasto has its own recipe: some add mussels and clams and some do not, and some use more or less tomato.
Gallery
Photos
Tap a photo to enlarge it.
Photo 1: brodetto alla vastese, a version without mussels or clams. Credits: Jtorquy (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons, resized; the menu icon is also made from it.
Tradition
History and trivia
Brodetto was born on fishing boats, where fishermen cooked fish left unsold or too small for the market. It was a poor dish, made with whatever the sea offered.
Today it is the signature dish of Vasto and of the whole southern Abruzzo coast, cooked in harbour restaurants and at home for celebrations.
Did you know? the pepper gives Vasto brodetto its characteristic flavour: in the past dried peppers were also used.