Portugal's Algarve Region, All in One Bowl: Cataplana

Along the coastal areas of Portugal's Algarve region, you'll find seafood stews called cataplanas. Now, they're named for the cooking vessel in which they're made. These beautiful, hammered copper pots with a hinged lid that opens up, and you have beautiful seafood stew inside. Now, there are variations all over the country, and Julia's here, and she's going to show us a great one that we can make at home, even maybe without this. Yes, we will make it more accessible for everyone here in the U.S. And we're going to base our recipe on a classic version that uses clams, or ameijoas. Ameijoas de cataplana is the traditional, yeah, one of the classic cataplanas. And we're going to add a few things to it, liven it up a bit, but using ingredients that you'd find in the region. Great. So, we're going to start with some onion. And how you cut the vegetables matter. We're going to cut them into nice, long, elegant strips. Now, I'm just going to slice it nice and thin. Halfway through, I always tip it on its side. Julia is a human food processor. All right, so that's just one onion. Now, to this, we're going to add a head of fennel. And to cut the fennel, just like the onion, we'll lop off the top and the bottom. Save that for later. Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to cut right through the middle. You can see this core here. I'm just going to use the tip of the knife to cut out the core. Pop it out. Now, I'm just going to lay it flat, and I'm going to make nice strips. Now, sometimes I like to peel off the layers and cut them individually, because the outside layers can be a bit thicker. Right. And you have that heart in there. Yeah. All right, so we're just going to slice this again into nice, thin slices. All right. Into the bowl with the onion this goes, because they're all going to go into the pot at the same time. Right. Great. All right, we're also going to add one bell pepper. I always cut it the same way, regardless of what shape it has to wind up in. That's by lopping off the top and the bottom. I cut down through the side, and I open it up, peel out the core, and then you have this nice, big, flat piece. You can cut away the ribs very carefully, being mindful of your fingers. And then, if you have this big, flat piece, you can cut it into whatever size or shape you need. Again, we're going for little matchsticks. All right, so that's one bell pepper. Into the bowl with everything else. Moving on to the meat of the stew. I have some linguiça here. This is 12 ounces of linguiça. In the Amejoas Necatlipana, which is the classical version, they usually use a local cured meat called presunto, but that can be hard to find here. Linguiça is great. If you can't find linguiça, you could definitely substitute chorizo. All right. I'm going to cut it up into slightly smaller pieces, into quarters, that way they can really render their flavor into the pot. And what's great about chorizo, linguiça, chorizo, from Spain as well, there's a lot of new mail-order sources now. They're usually frozen or refrigerator-packed, kept cool, so it's a great opportunity to try new dishes. 12 ounces of linguiça. I'm putting this in a separate bowl because it's going to go into the pot ahead of these vegetables. Last, we're going to add a little bit of shrimp. We're going to use a combination of shrimp and clams. It tastes delicious. And the shrimp cook really quickly, which is nice. So we're just going to peel and devein the shrimp. You want to pull off the peel completely. And these are 21-25s, they're extra large shrimp. That means there's 21 to 25 per pound. This is 12 ounces of shrimp. I'm just going in and pulling out any of that nasty vein that could be there. Don't want to include that. Easy way to get rid of it, pull it out with a paring knife and wipe it on a paper towel. All right. So that's 12 ounces of shrimp. What I'm going to do is just cut them in half crosswise. That just makes the pieces a bit smaller. They fit on the spoon better with everything else. Shrimp go back in the bowl. And now what we're going to do is put a little bit of salt on the shrimp. If you wouldn't mind measuring out just a quarter teaspoon of salt. All right. Right over the top. There you go. Brilliant. Now the salt will do a couple things that'll help bring out the shrimp flavor, obviously, because it's salt, but it'll also help the shrimp stay nice and moist as they cook in the stew. So if you're using treated shrimp, if that's all you can find, skip this step. That's right. Okay. All right. So I'm gonna wash my hands, put these in the fridge and we can get cooking. Hey there, fellow fans of cooking. Want to stay in the know? Visit americastestkitchen.com and sign up for our free Notes from the Test Kitchen email newsletter. Get exclusive tips, seasonal recipes, product reviews, and more delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free at americastestkitchen.com. All right. So here I have a Dutch oven. That's what we're going to build our cataplana in. And I have two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in here. Been heating up over medium high heat. You can see it starting to shimmer. First into the pot is the linguiça. Yeah, this is gonna cook for about four minutes. It's gonna render some of its fat and flavor and start to get a little brown. I love this smell. And it gives you a hint of what the final stew's gonna taste like. The spices, the garlic, paprika. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Yep. So you said garlic. We're gonna add a little fresh garlic. This is two cloves. Gonna add it right to the pot through a garlic press. We're gonna add some smoked paprika. This is three quarters of a teaspoon smoked paprika. And a little heat. Half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. Just wanna cook this until they're fragrant and you smell it. Oh, you want those flavors to bloom in the oil. And that just doesn't take very long. And those flavors are found in the linguiça themselves. So you're just amplifying what was already gorgeous. Yes. All right, now time to add the vegetables. The onion, the fennel, the red pepper. And to this, we're gonna add a little bit of salt. We're gonna add half a teaspoon of table salt. Help reinforce those flavors, bring out some of that moisture. Yes. And we're gonna cook this still over medium high heat for about eight to 10 minutes until the vegetables are nice and softened. Okay. All right, so those vegetables have just another minute or so. Now we're gonna add tomatoes. And tomatoes are a classic ingredient. But we found when we added the juice in the canned tomatoes, it was just too tomatoey. It covered up the delicate flavor of the seafood. So we're gonna strain away the juice. This is a 28 ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes. All right. You can see that's a lot of juice. Yes, we'll make Bloody Marys later. Ooh, good call, good call. All right, so now I'm just gonna quickly chop them. I'm gonna just stir. Yeah. All right, using a bench scraper, just gonna transfer the chopped tomatoes right to the pot. Now, we're gonna add some white wine, which is very classic. Just half a cup of white wine. A lot of recipes just use white wine tomatoes. We wanted to add a little more liquid to the pot. So here I'm gonna add an eight ounce bottle of clam juice. And we're gonna let this simmer for about five minutes until it's thickened up a bit. All right, this has been simmering for a few minutes. You can see it's thickened ever so slightly. And that's what you're looking for. So to add the clams, I'm gonna crank the heat to high. This is three pounds of little neck clams. And they're a nice size. They cook through evenly in the pot. And if you use more than three pounds, it just overwhelms the pot. So that's why we're gonna add shrimp to really up our seafood game. Yeah, so we're just gonna stir these in. We're gonna put the lid on. We're gonna cook them until all the clams have opened. That takes five to seven minutes. Okay, great. It's been about seven minutes. Oh. Oh, they've all opened. Isn't that lovely? So now it's time to add the shrimp. The reason we're adding the shrimp a little later is it would overcook if we let it boil like that. And in fact, I just turned the heat off. I'm just gonna sprinkle the shrimp right over the top. We're gonna let them cook off the heat just using the residual heat left in the pot and the stew. And that'll take about five minutes. All right, so lid on, heat's off. Five minutes. Five minutes to dinner? Mm-hmm. Excellent. I know. It is a heavenly smell, isn't it? It really is. And you can see the shrimp are nice and pink, perfectly cooked through, but they won't be overdone and rubbery. Right. Which is the benefit of cooking them off the heat. So I'm gonna add a half a cup of chopped parsley and just stir it in nice and gentle. This also gives me a chance to check out all the clams. At this point, if any haven't opened, it's time to get rid of them. Gotcha. All these clams are opened. We're good to go. All right, I'm gonna dish you up a healthy bowl. Yes, gladly. Plenty of that linguiza, plenty of clams. That gorgeous, gorgeous broth. You notice I have some nice crusty bread here because dipping the bread in the sauce, it's awesome. All right, here's a little bit of lemon if you'd like to squeeze a little lemon over top. Fabulous, oh, thank you. I'm gonna go for one of those shrimp first. Sweet and tender. What's the flavor of the broth? It has depth and complexity to it. Every bite, it just tastes better and better. Clams are gorgeous. Perfect size, nice and super tender. Oh, this is my favorite part, the bread. And since you insist on the bread, going for it. Oh yeah, nice, hearty, crusty bread. I have to stop eating long enough to say thank you. You're welcome. Well, you definitely wanna make this beautiful cataplana. And it starts with building the cataplana with linguiza, red pepper, and fennel. Stir the clams into the sauce and cook them until their shells open. Add the shrimp and let them sit off heat until they're cooked through. So from America's Test Kitchen, a little taste of coastal Portugal, it's cataplana. Mm, gorgeous, yeah. More bread, please. Yeah, isn't the broth incredible? We hope you enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it. Don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe to our channel. And if you're ready to take your cooking to the next level, head over to americastestkitchen.com and get a free all-access trial membership. 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