It has been a while since I last had fish and since I was still in the soup and stew mode I thought that I would combine the two ideas and do a fish soup or stew. Luckily I had been mulling over the idea of using the flavours of a putanesca sauce in soup form and I figured that using fish in such a soup would be perfect! A putanesca sauce is an Italian sauce that normally contains things like onions, garlic, chili pepper flakes, anchovies, olives and capers making it tangy, spicy and salty and plain old just filled to the brim with flavour. I was really taken with the idea of using these flavours in a stew and I just knew that pairing it with a firm white fish wold work really well. I did however want to get some more vegetables into the stew to make it lean more towards the healthy side of things and I liked the sound of adding some zucchini which is still available. For the fish, I went with a nice piece of halibut which tends to hold together fairly well, though you could use any white fish in this recipe. I served the puttanesca stew along with some crusty bread to make sure that none of the tasty broth got away!
