Cacciucco

On the fish: "mixed white fish" is not vague laziness in the recipe, it's the whole economic logic of the dish. In Livorno this was made from the bycatch and the unsellable bits — gurnard, weever, small octopus, whatever was left in the boat after the good stuff went to buyers. In an ordinary UK kitchen, that translates to: go to the fishmonger counter, not the pre-packed fillets, and ask what's cheap and firm-fleshed that day — gurnard, pollock, coley, monkfish tail, hake frames and cheeks if they'll sell them to you. You want a mix of textures: something that holds its shape under an hour of simmering, and something softer that will start to break down and thicken the broth a little. One kind of fish alone gives you a soup. A mix gives you a stew. If you can only get one or two varieties, that's fine — the mechanism still works, you just lose some of the layering of texture.

The prawns are not there for bulk. Raw, shell-on if you can get them, because the shells leach sweetness and a faint iodine note into the broth in the last few minutes — that's worth more than the convenience of pre-peeled ones. They go in last because they're already tender and cook in minutes; anywhere earlier and they turn to rubber, and rubber prawns are the single fastest way to make a guest think you've ruined the dish, even if the fish is perfect.

Sage with garlic and oil at the start is doing aromatic groundwork, not seasoning in the final-dish sense — the sage's resinous edge mellows the whole pot over the long simmer and you won't taste it as "sage" at the end, just as roundness. Don't swap it for something leafier like basil here; you want an oil-soluble herb that can take heat without turning bitter or grassy, and sage and bay are the two that do that reliably. If you've no sage, a bay leaf does a similar steadying job, just quieter.

The olive oil should be decent but doesn't need to be your finest bottle — any oil with no smell of its own that can carry garlic flavour into the broth will do; extra virgin olive oil is traditional because it was what was in the house, not because anything else actively fails.

Tinned tomato, not fresh, and that's not corner-cutting — it's consistency. Tinned tomatoes are picked and canned at ripeness and give you a reliable acidity and body every time; fresh ones in a British supermarket in February would be watery and underripe and would thin your broth instead of backing it. Chop them roughly rather than puréeing — you want bits of tomato breaking down slowly into the sauce, not a smooth base.

The red wine isn't for flavour on its own — you're meant to cook it off entirely, uncovered, until the sharp alcohol smell is gone and what's left is just acidity and depth folded into the fond from the sear. If you rush this step and add water before the wine's properly reduced, you'll taste raw alcohol sitting on top of the broth, and no amount of simmering afterwards fully fixes that — it needs to happen now, open, with the smell as your guide, not a clock.

The bread at the end is not garnish. It's doing the job a kazan lid or a second pair of hands might do elsewhere — it's there to be dunked, to soak broth, to turn a stew into a meal that needs no rice or potatoes alongside it. Toast it hard enough that it holds its shape against wet broth for a minute or two, rub the garlic on while it's still hot so the clove's oils actually transfer onto the surface, and don't skip the toasting and think a raw slice will do the same job — raw bread just goes soggy and falls apart in the bowl, toasted bread survives being a spoon.