seafood and red wine stew

 Gluten free - grain free - dairy free - sugar free - nut free - egg free

This is a beautiful, thick, rich, dish, perfect for a cold evening indoors. You can really use what ever seafood you like in it. I honestly don't remember where I first found the recipe...I wrote it down from a book years ago, and have done lots of tweaking since, so I'm just going to call it mine! It takes about 20 minutes of preparation time, and then simmers for an hour, so you need to account for this amount of cooking time. It's beautiful served with some crusty bread and a glass of the red wine you've used to cook with! This recipe serves 4 for a main dish.

Ingredients

• 500-700 grams seafood, which could include a combination of any or all of these:
  -cleaned squid tubes, sliced into thin rings
  -firm white fish, cut into 3cm/ 1 inch cubes (make sure it's firm fish or it will fall apart with the slow cooking)
  -green prawns, shelled

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 medium sized onions, finely diced
• 4 – 8 cloves garlic (I like lots), crushed or finely diced
• 2 cups dry red wine, such as Merlot or Barbera
• 2 cups of canned tomatoes (with juice) or 1 bottle (about 700g) passata
• 4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley or oregano, plus extra for garnish
• 1/2 small cinnamon stick
• 2 whole cloves, or 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 small bay leaves
• Juice of one lemon
• Optional vegetables: broccoli, green beans, peas

Method

• Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-based pan. Turn to low heat and saute the onions until getting soft (5-10 minutes).

• Turn stove to medium heat, add the garlic, and pan fry the seafood. If using prawns, fry for about 2 minutes on each side. If using squid or fish, fry for about 3 minutes each side. If using prawns, remove from pan after frying, cover and keep warm. Leave fish and squid in the pan.

• Add the wine, tomatoes, herbs, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves, and a generous amount of freshly ground salt and pepper. Once boiling, reduce heat to as low as possible and simmer, uncovered, until the liquid has thickened. This can take 45mins to an hour. Watch it closely so you don't lose too much liquid.

• I like to add more veges to my dinners, so in the last 15 mins or so of cooking time, I steam some broccoli and /or green beans cut into SMALL pieces and stir them through at the end. You could also stir some frozen peas through the stew for the last 5 minutes.

• Return prawns to the dish, remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaves, and stir in the lemon juice.

• Garnish with extra herbs and serve immediately.