The Secret to Italy's Famous Fish in CRAZY Water

**The Art of Making Crazy Water**

We're gonna toast this guy warm it up real nice now since I'm making a small batch I'm going to use my 10 inch frying pan with a lid. Get it on medium-high heat and add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. And then we can add in the onions once it's hot, hit them with a small amount of salt, and begin sauteing.

One other ingredient I like to use in this recipe is tomato paste, so I'm going to get that out and ready to go after a couple minutes sauteing and the onions are turning translucent. Then we can add in the sliced garlic, hit them with a touch of salt lightly seasoning each ingredient as we add them. When the onions are starting to slightly brown and the garlic is soft and fragrant, we can add the cherry tomatoes. Look alive, we're cooking here! Pay attention again lightly season the tomatoes and then cook the tomatoes until they cook down and soften. You can even use the spoon to squish them.

Now we can add in our cherry peppers get that worked in and now we can add a tablespoon of that tomato paste and stir it all together to get that tomato paste coating the vegetables and cook that down for about a minute or two. This is going to be the base for our crazy water. Once that's cooked down, we can kill the heat before we add in a cup or two of white wine then carefully turn the heat back on reduce the Wine Down by a little more than half.

Then we're going to add in a cup of the water and finally Jazz this crazy water up we're going to add this crazy Cherry pepper juice I'll go in with a nice squirt to start and then I'll season the broth with salt and then taste it. I want to make sure that broth is flavorful and Zippy enough for me, I think it could use a little more cherry pepper so I'll add that. Then I want to allow my broth to reduce slightly before adding the fish.

According to the legendary Italian cookbook author Marce, the crazy water should be thicker than a broth but not as thick as a sauce and that is up to you to determine that's when you need to stop reading a recipe and just be a cook and use your sense and judgment to decide for yourself if you make a mistake you don't reduce the water enough you don't add enough salt the water is Bland you can always learn and never make that mistake again.

Once that sauce is at a nice consistency we can Nestle the fish into the crazy water cover with some of the vegetables lower the heat down and then place a lid on it set a timer for five minutes. The way we cut that fish will make it a quick cook while it cooks we can heat up the ciabatta roll and pick some basil from my garden then after around four minutes I'm gonna go and check them and I can feel that they're already done so I'm going to kill the heat finish with some fresh parsley.

And now this is going to be best served in a shallow bowl and the tricky thing about this is sort of fishing out these delicate pieces of fish onto the bowl and if the fish falls apart it falls apart, it's not a big deal. We can just use that as a base to rest the piece that we can transfer successfully to the plate.

The reason I like to cut them and cook them this way is not only is it a fast cook but but these thin strips of fillets sort of allows you to use a fork and a piece of bread to just get a nice Fork full easily onto your utensil and it's just a little easier to eat in my opinion.

Then we'll get all those goodies in the crazy water pour it right on top with just enough crazy water to sort of pull at the bottom of the bowl then we'll pick some nice young fresh basil leaves right on top, a little more fresh parsley. Then we break bread and dig in and you use that bread almost like a little Fork to push it all on there then you take a hit of the bread.

**The Recipe: Crazy Water**

Here is the recipe for making crazy water:

Ingredients:

- 1 onion

- 3 cloves garlic

- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

- 2 cups mixed cherry peppers, sliced

- 2 tablespoons tomato paste

- 2 cups white wine

- 4 cups water

- Salt and pepper to taste

- Fresh parsley and basil for garnish

Instructions:

1. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat.

2. Add the onion and cook until it starts to brown, then add garlic, salt, and stir.

3. Cook until onions are translucent, then add cherry tomatoes, sliced peppers, tomato paste, salt, and pepper. Stir and cook for 2 minutes.

4. Kill heat, carefully turn on heat, add white wine, and reduce by half.

5. Add water and let it Jazz up with Cherry pepper juice.

6. Let broth reduce slightly before adding the fish.

7. Cook fish until done, then serve in a shallow bowl with crazy water.

**The Secret to Making Crazy Water**

According to Marce, the key is to use fresh ingredients and to taste as you go. Don't be afraid to add more salt or pepper if needed. And most importantly, have fun making it!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enSo today we're making the famous Southern Italian Coastal Classic which translates to fish in crazy water and let me tell you something it's not that crazy but I'm gonna make it crazier so let's just jump right in now traditionally aquapata was a whole fish poached in seawater so it's the salty sea water combined with wine that's how you get the name crazy water it's just a salty broth and now since most people don't live by the ocean to make this you can just use a water that's salted we're gonna add a few things to Jazz it up and instead of using a whole fish we're gonna use a beautiful piece of halibut now like I said this is usually served with a whole fish or at the very least with the skin on and the skin is on this the skin actually has a little collagen in it and sort of releases into the broth and it sort of thickens it a bit which is nice the doctor said I got high cholesterols again so she wants me to eat this stuff without the skin so what I'm gonna do is remove it which I don't really love poached fish skin anyway now to do this just like we do with making chicken cutlets bring the board to the edge and get down to board level and using a thin fillet knife work the knife between the skin and the fillet and with the knife at the smallest downward angle just slowly wiggle the Knight allow the edge and the angle to do the work until the knife wiggles out the other side and because the knife was angled down you get a perfectly clean piece of skin without butchering the Flesh of the fish and now you can keep that fly whole but I actually like to split it in two I find it's a little easier to eat at the end that way now if you didn't want to waste that you can totally add this to the broth and allow it to release some of that collagen some of that fat and you get the same effect but I'm gonna make my doctor happy today and just not use it so now that I'm about 30 minutes away from cooking it what I'm just going to do is season them on all sides and so now these are just going to go hang out in the refrigerator that salt's going to penetrate them we're not really worried about a crust so drying them out isn't that important but it will likely happen so while these rest in the fridge we can work on the other stuff first up the basics onion garlic some cherry tomatoes so gives me about a half an onion is this is for one portion remove the top and the root end and with the lines of the onion running perpendicular to the knife slice around the curvature of the onion once you get past halfway stop push away the slices and push the small end of the onion forward so that you have a new stable surface to continue slicing then cut a couple garlic cloves in half and then slice them thinly the amount of garlic is up to you but I like a lot in this dish then we've got about a half a pound of cherry tomatoes that I got from the farmer's market and these are so sweet and flavorful I'm just gonna cut them into quarters then we need a little fresh Italian parsley chopped as fine as you can so we've got our Basics onion cherry tomatoes garlic parsley I'm gonna have some basil a little wine about a cup of water salt and then to make it a little crazier usually people add a little chili flake it's not enough I'm gonna take some cherry peppers and I'm gonna do a little trick I do with my Cavatelli sausage and broccoli essentially what I'm going to do is make a cherry pepper sauce an emulsification of pureed cherry peppers plus the liquid that they're packed in which will give a nice heat but it also give a nice acidity to the dish and it's just gonna add a lot of oomph to the dish and that mixed with the garlic and the fish just it's beautiful so into this container maybe you got like a little bullet blender or something that would work great I'm going to take a few large spoonfuls and I get enough of them in there to be able to blend it if you have leftovers perfect and pastas and all sorts of stuff you'll probably end up having to use about half the jar of the peppers and then I'm going to add Cherry pepper liquid directly into it just enough to get it pure rate so there's no science to it I'm just going to take a little bit at a time see if the blender is going to fit in there and puree it all and we'll make adjustments later now if the peppers aren't pureeing into a smooth thick sauce then you need a touch more liquid to help it get going and if it's too thin you added too much liquid but I'll tell you this is the crazy juice right here and it's the thing that takes this dish over the top and I'm just going to get it into a little squeeze bottle so it's nice and easy to store in the fridge here's the super crazy juice and then because I like it crazy we're just gonna make sure we throw a few more cherry peppers in there just for good measure now aquapata this typical of the coastline around Naples and I'm actually going to be in that area in a month for a way and now I can say things like ciao Senora como estas because I've been brushing up on my Italian thanks to our sponsor today Rosetta Stone now in college I took Italian with a teacher but we also had a workshop where we used Rosetta Stone to learn Italian and I learned nothing from the teacher and everything from Rosetta Stone so I've been a huge fan of them for a very long time and Rosetta Stone doesn't rely on teaching you translation instead it uses your natural language abilities to teach you a new language in an immersive intuitive and visual way and being a visual learner I appreciate that I've actually stopped using other services because they don't have visuals and this helps you prepare for real-life conversations that you're going to encounter when you travel and one of the best parts of Rosetta Stone is their voice recognition tool which helps ensure that each word and phrase you learn you're pronouncing perfectly the lessons are as short as 10 minutes so it fits your schedule and with the mobile app you can easily learn a new language anywhere you are and with a lifetime subscription you get access us to all languages when you purchase now you'll never have to pay renewal fee ever again and it allows you to learn at your own pace you can't learn a new language overnight so you need to give yourself some time and right now Rosetta Stone is offering 15 off the lifetime subscription originally 299 dollars now you can get it for 150 so go visit my link down in the description sign up for Rosetta Stone you can learn any language you want for life now let's get back into the recipe so here's all the crazy stuff for the crazy water and then you're going to want to make sure you get some good bread to stop up all that broth I like a nice ciabatta bread a little crust on the outside soft and Airy in the inside soaks up all that bread once we get everything situated in the pan and poaching we're gonna toast this guy warm it up real nice now since I'm making a small batch I'm going to use my 10 inch frying pan with a lid get it on medium-high heat and add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan and then we can add in the onions once it's hot hit them with a small amount of salt and begin sauteing one other ingredient I forgot to mention that I I like to use in this recipe is tomato paste so I'm going to get that out and ready to go after a couple minutes sauteing and the onions are turning translucent then we can add in the sliced garlic hit them with a touch of salt lightly seasoning each ingredient as we add them then when the onions are starting to slightly Brown and the garlic is soft and fragrant we can add the cherry tomatoes look alive we're cooking here pay attention again lightly season the tomatoes and then cook the tomatoes until they cook down and soften you can even use the spoon to squish them now we can add in our cherry peppers get that worked in and now we can add a tablespoon of that tomato paste and stir it all together to get that tomato paste coating the vegetables and cook that down for about a minute or two this is going to be the base for our crazy water once that's cooked down we can kill the heat before we add in a cup or two of white wine then carefully turn the heat back on reduce the Wine Down by a little more than half then we're going to add in a cup of the water and finally to Jazz this crazy water up we're going to add this crazy Cherry pepper juice I'll go in with a nice squirt to start and then I'll season the broth with salt and then taste it I want to make sure that broth is flavorful and Zippy enough for me I think it could use a little more cherry pepper so I'll add that then I want to allow my broth to reduce slightly before adding the fish according to the legendary Italian cookbook author marce the crazy water should be thicker than a broth but not as thick as a sauce and that is up to you to determine that's when you need to stop reading a recipe and just be a cook and use your sense and judgment to decide for yourself if you make a mistake you don't reduce the water enough you don't add enough salt the water is Bland you can always learn and never make that mistake again once that sauce is at a nice consistency we can Nestle the fish into the crazy water cover with some of the vegetables lower the heat down and then place a lid on it set a timer for five minutes the way we cut that fish will make it a quick cook while it Cooks we can heat up the ciabatta roll and pick some basil from my garden then after around four minutes I'm gonna go and check them and I can feel that they're already done so I'm going to kill the heat finish with some fresh parsley and then we're ready to plate and now this is going to be best served in a shallow bowl and the tricky thing about this is sort of fishing out these delicate pieces of fish onto the bowl and if the fish falls apart it falls apart it's not a big deal we can just use that as a base to rest the piece that we can transfer successfully to the plate and we are going to make this pretty but this is more of a rustic dish so don't really worry about it and the reason I like to cut them and cook them this way is not only is it a fast cook but but these thin strips of fillets sort of allows you to use a fork and a piece of bread to just get a nice Fork full easily onto your utensil and it's just a little easier to eat in my opinion then we'll get all those goodies in the crazy water pour it right on top with just enough crazy water to sort of pull at the bottom of the bowl then we'll pick some nice young fresh basil leaves right on top a little more fresh parsley and then we break bread and dig in and you use that bread almost like a little Fork to push it all on there then you take a hit of the bread it's a simple broth but it's spicy and flavorful you can of course leave out the spicy crazy but I think that's the thing that makes this crazy like it's made it's a great recipe You're Gonna Love It recipes gonna be down in the description but before we go make sure you check out this video I posted last week because it is probably my favorite video I've ever made and it's probably my best work so I'd love it if you went and go give it a watch after this link will be in the title card that's all that I got today I'll see you next time until then take care of yourself and go feed yourselfSo today we're making the famous Southern Italian Coastal Classic which translates to fish in crazy water and let me tell you something it's not that crazy but I'm gonna make it crazier so let's just jump right in now traditionally aquapata was a whole fish poached in seawater so it's the salty sea water combined with wine that's how you get the name crazy water it's just a salty broth and now since most people don't live by the ocean to make this you can just use a water that's salted we're gonna add a few things to Jazz it up and instead of using a whole fish we're gonna use a beautiful piece of halibut now like I said this is usually served with a whole fish or at the very least with the skin on and the skin is on this the skin actually has a little collagen in it and sort of releases into the broth and it sort of thickens it a bit which is nice the doctor said I got high cholesterols again so she wants me to eat this stuff without the skin so what I'm gonna do is remove it which I don't really love poached fish skin anyway now to do this just like we do with making chicken cutlets bring the board to the edge and get down to board level and using a thin fillet knife work the knife between the skin and the fillet and with the knife at the smallest downward angle just slowly wiggle the Knight allow the edge and the angle to do the work until the knife wiggles out the other side and because the knife was angled down you get a perfectly clean piece of skin without butchering the Flesh of the fish and now you can keep that fly whole but I actually like to split it in two I find it's a little easier to eat at the end that way now if you didn't want to waste that you can totally add this to the broth and allow it to release some of that collagen some of that fat and you get the same effect but I'm gonna make my doctor happy today and just not use it so now that I'm about 30 minutes away from cooking it what I'm just going to do is season them on all sides and so now these are just going to go hang out in the refrigerator that salt's going to penetrate them we're not really worried about a crust so drying them out isn't that important but it will likely happen so while these rest in the fridge we can work on the other stuff first up the basics onion garlic some cherry tomatoes so gives me about a half an onion is this is for one portion remove the top and the root end and with the lines of the onion running perpendicular to the knife slice around the curvature of the onion once you get past halfway stop push away the slices and push the small end of the onion forward so that you have a new stable surface to continue slicing then cut a couple garlic cloves in half and then slice them thinly the amount of garlic is up to you but I like a lot in this dish then we've got about a half a pound of cherry tomatoes that I got from the farmer's market and these are so sweet and flavorful I'm just gonna cut them into quarters then we need a little fresh Italian parsley chopped as fine as you can so we've got our Basics onion cherry tomatoes garlic parsley I'm gonna have some basil a little wine about a cup of water salt and then to make it a little crazier usually people add a little chili flake it's not enough I'm gonna take some cherry peppers and I'm gonna do a little trick I do with my Cavatelli sausage and broccoli essentially what I'm going to do is make a cherry pepper sauce an emulsification of pureed cherry peppers plus the liquid that they're packed in which will give a nice heat but it also give a nice acidity to the dish and it's just gonna add a lot of oomph to the dish and that mixed with the garlic and the fish just it's beautiful so into this container maybe you got like a little bullet blender or something that would work great I'm going to take a few large spoonfuls and I get enough of them in there to be able to blend it if you have leftovers perfect and pastas and all sorts of stuff you'll probably end up having to use about half the jar of the peppers and then I'm going to add Cherry pepper liquid directly into it just enough to get it pure rate so there's no science to it I'm just going to take a little bit at a time see if the blender is going to fit in there and puree it all and we'll make adjustments later now if the peppers aren't pureeing into a smooth thick sauce then you need a touch more liquid to help it get going and if it's too thin you added too much liquid but I'll tell you this is the crazy juice right here and it's the thing that takes this dish over the top and I'm just going to get it into a little squeeze bottle so it's nice and easy to store in the fridge here's the super crazy juice and then because I like it crazy we're just gonna make sure we throw a few more cherry peppers in there just for good measure now aquapata this typical of the coastline around Naples and I'm actually going to be in that area in a month for a way and now I can say things like ciao Senora como estas because I've been brushing up on my Italian thanks to our sponsor today Rosetta Stone now in college I took Italian with a teacher but we also had a workshop where we used Rosetta Stone to learn Italian and I learned nothing from the teacher and everything from Rosetta Stone so I've been a huge fan of them for a very long time and Rosetta Stone doesn't rely on teaching you translation instead it uses your natural language abilities to teach you a new language in an immersive intuitive and visual way and being a visual learner I appreciate that I've actually stopped using other services because they don't have visuals and this helps you prepare for real-life conversations that you're going to encounter when you travel and one of the best parts of Rosetta Stone is their voice recognition tool which helps ensure that each word and phrase you learn you're pronouncing perfectly the lessons are as short as 10 minutes so it fits your schedule and with the mobile app you can easily learn a new language anywhere you are and with a lifetime subscription you get access us to all languages when you purchase now you'll never have to pay renewal fee ever again and it allows you to learn at your own pace you can't learn a new language overnight so you need to give yourself some time and right now Rosetta Stone is offering 15 off the lifetime subscription originally 299 dollars now you can get it for 150 so go visit my link down in the description sign up for Rosetta Stone you can learn any language you want for life now let's get back into the recipe so here's all the crazy stuff for the crazy water and then you're going to want to make sure you get some good bread to stop up all that broth I like a nice ciabatta bread a little crust on the outside soft and Airy in the inside soaks up all that bread once we get everything situated in the pan and poaching we're gonna toast this guy warm it up real nice now since I'm making a small batch I'm going to use my 10 inch frying pan with a lid get it on medium-high heat and add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan and then we can add in the onions once it's hot hit them with a small amount of salt and begin sauteing one other ingredient I forgot to mention that I I like to use in this recipe is tomato paste so I'm going to get that out and ready to go after a couple minutes sauteing and the onions are turning translucent then we can add in the sliced garlic hit them with a touch of salt lightly seasoning each ingredient as we add them then when the onions are starting to slightly Brown and the garlic is soft and fragrant we can add the cherry tomatoes look alive we're cooking here pay attention again lightly season the tomatoes and then cook the tomatoes until they cook down and soften you can even use the spoon to squish them now we can add in our cherry peppers get that worked in and now we can add a tablespoon of that tomato paste and stir it all together to get that tomato paste coating the vegetables and cook that down for about a minute or two this is going to be the base for our crazy water once that's cooked down we can kill the heat before we add in a cup or two of white wine then carefully turn the heat back on reduce the Wine Down by a little more than half then we're going to add in a cup of the water and finally to Jazz this crazy water up we're going to add this crazy Cherry pepper juice I'll go in with a nice squirt to start and then I'll season the broth with salt and then taste it I want to make sure that broth is flavorful and Zippy enough for me I think it could use a little more cherry pepper so I'll add that then I want to allow my broth to reduce slightly before adding the fish according to the legendary Italian cookbook author marce the crazy water should be thicker than a broth but not as thick as a sauce and that is up to you to determine that's when you need to stop reading a recipe and just be a cook and use your sense and judgment to decide for yourself if you make a mistake you don't reduce the water enough you don't add enough salt the water is Bland you can always learn and never make that mistake again once that sauce is at a nice consistency we can Nestle the fish into the crazy water cover with some of the vegetables lower the heat down and then place a lid on it set a timer for five minutes the way we cut that fish will make it a quick cook while it Cooks we can heat up the ciabatta roll and pick some basil from my garden then after around four minutes I'm gonna go and check them and I can feel that they're already done so I'm going to kill the heat finish with some fresh parsley and then we're ready to plate and now this is going to be best served in a shallow bowl and the tricky thing about this is sort of fishing out these delicate pieces of fish onto the bowl and if the fish falls apart it falls apart it's not a big deal we can just use that as a base to rest the piece that we can transfer successfully to the plate and we are going to make this pretty but this is more of a rustic dish so don't really worry about it and the reason I like to cut them and cook them this way is not only is it a fast cook but but these thin strips of fillets sort of allows you to use a fork and a piece of bread to just get a nice Fork full easily onto your utensil and it's just a little easier to eat in my opinion then we'll get all those goodies in the crazy water pour it right on top with just enough crazy water to sort of pull at the bottom of the bowl then we'll pick some nice young fresh basil leaves right on top a little more fresh parsley and then we break bread and dig in and you use that bread almost like a little Fork to push it all on there then you take a hit of the bread it's a simple broth but it's spicy and flavorful you can of course leave out the spicy crazy but I think that's the thing that makes this crazy like it's made it's a great recipe You're Gonna Love It recipes gonna be down in the description but before we go make sure you check out this video I posted last week because it is probably my favorite video I've ever made and it's probably my best work so I'd love it if you went and go give it a watch after this link will be in the title card that's all that I got today I'll see you next time until then take care of yourself and go feed yourself\n"