When I was a the culinary lecturer on a cruise organized by Gohagan & Company to Portugal, Spain, France (Belle-Ile-en-Mer and Honfleur) and the walk-around Channel Island of Guernsey, one part of my onboard job – and one I really liked – was to call the play-by-play for Chef Alain Morville’s demo of a terrific Portuguese Seafood Stew.

Morville’s stew, known as Caldeirada da Marisco, is an example of a dish that lends itself to variation.  As he was setting up for the demo, the chef, who was born in the north of France and began his career as a pastry chef (of course I loved him for that), said, “You know, this is a Portuguese dish, but it’s just like French fish stews.  For instance, it’s a lot like Cotriade, a Breton fish stew.”

I knew exactly what he meant, since the origins of these stews are all pretty similar:  they were dishes that fishermen made onboard their ships.  For the most part, they were very simple dishes – soupy dishes in which the cooking liquid was often sea water and the fish was often whatever wouldn’t fetch the highest prices in the market.

This version of the dish is not as frugal as a sailor’s stew.  The chef used lots of seafood and added chunks of monkfish, too; he poured in a whole bottle of white wine (sauvignon blanc); and instead of water, he used shrimp stock, made with shrimp heads and shells, aromatic vegetables and a little more white wine.  He also added a few lumps of butter at the end – a more typically French than Portuguese finish.  But as he said, everything about this recipe is changeable.  You can use one or many kinds of shellfish; the liquid can be chicken or vegetable broth or just water; the fish can be cod (as would often be in Portugal) or hake, haddock, monk or any other firm white fish; and you can go heavier on the garlic or onion, if you’d like.  In other words, this is another of my favorite type of recipe – one you can play around with and make your own.

Photographs by Mathieu Gesta.