XIII. Brodeto de pessi/ Little broth for fish

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This may be it for the next week or two (unless I can make more progress on the "butter of cheese" recipe this weekend while cooking at the demo). My friend who lives close to the butcher's that carries exotic meats has offered to pick some up for me, but I called first and they won't be getting any more boar for at least another week or two, and it might make more sense to get all three meats at once for the upcoming recipes (Boar, Venison, and Rabbit) although I think I can get the rabbit much cheaper at the local asian stores.

XIII.    Brodeto de pessi
Toy lo pesse e lesallo, poy toy petrosilo e noce e una molena de pan e pasta insiema, e toy specie dolze e forte e fai bolire insiema e meti sopra lo pesse ed è bono perfetto, etc.
XIII. Little broth for fish
Take the fish and boil it, then take parsley and walnuts and the crumb of bread and grind these all together, and take sweet and strong spices and let it boil altogether and put it over the fish and it is good, perfect etc.
My interpretation: 
16 oz fish- tillapia / Pollock (these are just what I had on hand, very fresh) recipe dosen't specify
4 oz walnuts
4 oz homemade breadcrumbs
1.5 oz Italian parsley
4 tsp sweet spice mix
4 tsp black & strong spice mix

The first taste of this I did more lightly spiced- and may have had far too much liquid in to start- I had the fish boiling in approximately 2 lt. of water. I decided it was too bland and added more spices, but instead of the pre-mixed "black and strong" spice mix from this same manuscript, I used black and long pepper, leaving out the nutmeg as there was one potential taster that is extremely allergic to it (and often forgets to ask)- and there was what I consider to be a tragic black pepper accident involving opening the wrong side of the pepper dispenser. :( Many of the tasters thought it was good the way it was, but I felt the excessive pepper overwhelmed the more complex flavors of the broth and the sweet spice mix which has ginger, cinnamon and cloves.

I've got the fish in the pot boiling away. Once it was well boiled, before I added the additional ingredients I removed two cups of the broth that I used for yesterday's recipe. I think there was still far too much liquid.

Here are the rest of the ingredients, walnuts, Italian parsley, and homemade bread crumbs (I find them to be much less gritty in sauces and soups, not to mention less expensive).


Here are the walnuts, parsley, and breadcrumbs measured and waiting in the food processor- I love my kitchenAid/ minion.
 

To show the how fine they were chopped and the visual ratio


Here's the broth, now with the bulking ingredients and the spices on top for the last bit of boiling.

Here is the final plating, although much of the fish wound up breaking up into much smaller, bite sized pieces, which actually was nice for serving as a soup.
  

In conclusion- this recipe is definately worth doing again, and being a fish dish would be perfectly appropriate for lent. I think without the the pepper related tragedy it would have been much better, and much more complex. A portion of this has been frozen and I'll be bringing it to the food demo at June Faire so I can get more opinions on how to improve it, as my usual food tester won't try anything with seafood.