Paila marina

As tradition built it

Serves 6 to 8. Simmered about 10 minutes.

Ingredients

The base

• 2 to 3 tbsp oil
• 1 medium onion, sliced lengthways
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp ají de color
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• to taste salt and pepper
• as available the shellfish's strained cooking liquid
• 240ml white wine

The seafood

• 6 picorocos (giant barnacles), cooked
• 2 locos, cooked, in pieces
• 1kg mussels (choritos), cooked in their shells
• 1kg clams, cooked in their shells
• 100g shrimp tails
• 6 to 8 red conger fillets
• 6 piures, cleaned
• 1kg machas, tongues only

To finish

• to serve parsley, finely chopped

Method

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over a medium heat and fry the onion until lightly golden. Add the garlic, ají de color, oregano, salt and pepper and fry a few minutes more.
2. Pour in the strained shellfish liquid and the wine, bring it to the boil over a medium heat, and check the seasoning.
3. Add the shelled shellfish, keeping a few in their shells, the shrimp tails and the fish. Cook 10 minutes over a medium heat.
4. Add the mussels in their shells and the piures just to heat through, and take it off the heat. Add the machas last, just before serving.
5. Divide the seafood among warmed clay bowls, add the shellfish in their shells, pour the hot broth over, scatter with parsley, and serve hot.

Notes

The recipe is the Academia Gastronómica de Chile's, from INACAP's Centro de Innovación Gastronómica. Chef Axel Manríquez, for BioBioChile, builds a base on 1½ litres of fish stock with tomato, opens raw mussels and clams in it, adds squid and coriander, and cooks it gently 5 minutes in the serving dish.

What a modern chef changes

A properly built stock, and congrio cooked sous vide

Method

1. Roast the fish bones and shellfish shells briefly, deglaze, and clarify the resulting stock through a chinois for genuine depth and clarity rather than the cloudy, over-reduced result a rushed home version gives.
2. Cook the congrio itself sous vide to a precise, still-moist doneness and add it to the finished broth only at the very end, rather than simmering it through with everything else until it toughens.
3. Reserve and dehydrate a portion of the shellfish trim, then grind it in the spice grinder into a seasoning dust to finish the bowl, a genuine concentration of the sea rather than a garnish for its own sake.