Recipe · Lazio · Santa Severa
Civitavecchia fish soup
it is not from Santa Severa but from Civitavecchia, ten kilometres up the coast, and it comes from the same fleet that fishes in front of this beach: it is fishermen's food, not restaurant food. Two things set it apart from the other soups of the Tyrrhenian. The first is the marinara civitavecchiese, the pounded paste of garlic, oil, chilli and salted anchovy that everything starts from. The second is the mazzumaia, and this is where the secret lies: the small rock fish nobody used to buy because they were worth nothing, the ornate wrasse, the painted comber, the brown comber, the goby, the rainbow wrasse. They are cooked whole with the discarded bones, the whole thing is strained, and that reduced broth is what gives the soup a flavour the big fish alone would never give it. The name comes from the Neapolitan mazzamma, meaning stuff of little account
How it is made
Quantities are for 4 people. The steps are in the order you do them.
- pound two cloves of garlic, half the chilli and two fillets of salted anchovy in a mortar until you have a paste: this is the marinara civitavecchiese, and it is made by hand because a blender heats it
- for the broth, let half the marinara take a little colour in a pan with the oil, drop in the small fish whole along with the bones and heads, add two crushed peeled tomatoes and a few parsley stalks
- deglaze with half a glass of wine, cover with cold water by three fingers and cook over a low heat for forty minutes, skimming: then push it all through a fine sieve, pressing hard, and keep the broth warm. This step is not to be skipped, because it is the soup
- open the mussels and clams in a covered pan over a high heat, and take them off as soon as they open: strain and keep their liquor, which is already salty and decides the salt of everything else
- in a wide shallow pan heat the oil with the rest of the marinara, add the mantis shrimp and crabs and let them take on flavour for two minutes, then the cuttlefish and squid, which are the slowest to cook
- deglaze with the remaining wine, let it evaporate, add the peeled tomatoes and the paste dissolved in a ladle of broth, and cook for twenty minutes over a medium low heat
- now the fish goes in, from the largest to the smallest and a few minutes apart, never stirring: you move the pan, not the spoon, or the pieces fall apart
- moisten with the hot broth and the mussel liquor until barely covered, and bring it to the end of cooking in ten minutes: adjust the salt only now, and only if it needs it
- add the opened shellfish last, turn the heat off, cover and let it rest for five minutes
- toast the bread, rub it with the garlic, put it in the bottom of the bowls and pour the soup over it with its broth, finishing with raw chopped parsley
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