♪ Lauren> Today we're making acqua pazza.

It's an Italian dish, which translates to "crazy water" in English.

It features local fish poached in tomatoes, white wine, and all types of spices.

An important part of this dish is the crispy caper and sizzled shallot topping.

The first thing we want to do, is turn our stove on to medium high heat.

We're going to add about three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and get that nice and hot.

At that point we're going to add our capers, get them all nice and crispy.

That'll be a few minutes.

We're going to set that aside on a towel lined bowl to make sure that the olive oil drains off.

If you're having company over and you're trying to make your house smell good, if you fry some capers, that's the perfect way to get everyone hungry and excited for dinner.

There will still be some olive oil left in the pan.

After that olive oil is hot, we're going to add in our shallots.

We want them to get caramelized, slightly golden, but not burnt.

And we're going to let those shells melt away in the olive oil.

We're then going to add our thinly cut and peeled garlic cloves.

♪ We're going to add our gorgeous garlic and our shallots, the salt and pepper.

Chop, chop, chop.

And it doesn't need to be super fine, it's actually better if you keep it rustic.

I don't think the fishermen in Italy were busy finely chopping their parsley, when they were hungry.

Now we're going to add the zest of one lemon, and then we're going to add a pinch of red chili flakes.

Want to give this a little stir, and you'll see all the flavors combine.

We've got red, yellow, green, and try your best not to eat it all as you're stirring it.

Our topping is finished, that was easy-breezy.

Now it's time to make our crazy water.

So growing up, cooking with my Nana, we used a lot of cherry tomatoes, and we're Sicilian.

We used to make a cherry tomato pesto with roasted cherry tomatoes, lemon zest, herbs, parmesan, all the good stuff.

And this dish is totally inspired by that Sicilian pesto.

So we're going to add our tomatoes, and we're going to let them cook until they're jammy.

I'm going to drop in some pasta here.

This is about a half a pound of pasta, maybe a little more.

Since the pasta is going to finish cooking in the finished crazy water, we want to cook it just shy of "al dente."

♪ And let me tell you, the freshly cracked pepper makes all the difference.

As you can see, the tomatoes are really starting to get jammy.

Their skins are coming off slightly, they even smell sweet, and they're very soft.

The second I put the spoon on the tomatoes, they just melt together, and that's exactly what you should look for.

In your tube, you can just kind of measure out two tablespoons of tomato paste, more or less as you please.

It's really important that you cook your tomato paste, or else it's going to have kind of a metallic taste, since it was in the tube.

It's been a couple of minutes, and the tomato paste is caramelizing, so it's time to add our white wine.

It's important to cook with wine that you would be okay with drinking.

It doesn't need to be anything fancy, as long as it's pretty good, you'll be all set.

So now we're going to add our water, our bay leaf, and parmesan.

Depending on how brothy you like this dish, you can add up to two cups or as little as one cup.

I would rather start with one cup and see if it needs more, because you can't take it away, once you add it.

Our parmesan rind, parmesan rind is a great way to use up the rest of your parmesan cheese.

We're going to add a bay leaf, you can use fresh bay leaves or dry bay leaves.

So we're going to let that parmesan rind just melt into our crazy water.

We want to be sure to remove that, as well as the bay leaf, before we eat this dish.

Our pasta is about finished, and right about now, I'm going to take it out of the boiling water and add it to our crazy water.

Now we're getting to the best part, the fish.

And here in Charleston, there is a lot of really yummy fish around us.

For this acqua pazza dish, you really want to get a white mild fish.

And today I'm using an American red snapper.

So when you go to the fish purveyor, you want to ask for the fillets with the skin off and the bones out.

Or if you want to do it yourself at home, that's great.

You want to cut your acqua pazza into an inch big chunks.

This fish will take only a few minutes to cook, and if you want it to cook extra fast, you'll just cut it smaller.

Sometimes I call my fish purveyor and I say, hey, what's the freshest you have today?

They say, oh, a boat just came in this morning, we've got a whole bunch, but sometimes they only have a few.

It all depends on the day.

You kind of just want to roll with whatever is the freshest.

This is about a pound of American red snapper after it's been skinned, boned, and cut.

And always remember to season your fish with a little bit of salt and pepper.

Let's take this fish over there.

We're going to dump our fish right into the pot.

And I'm going to add a little bit more water, to be sure that this acqua pazza has enough liquid.

Our acqua pazza is finally finished and it is ready to serve.

I can smell the tomatoes and all the red snapper, and I even have some fresh focaccia that I just made, that we can serve with it.

Here we have it, acqua pazza, we have the rigatoni, all the snapper, boy this smells so good.

So when you serve this into your bowls, you want to be sure that you get a little bit of everything, some pasta, some fish, tomatoes.

I have a sweet friend coming over for dinner later.

We had a long day of surfing, and this dish will be the perfect way to relax and maybe talk about some waves.

A little bit of our crispy caper and sweet shallot topping, right in the middle.

Fresh parsley leaves will be the finishing touch.

And here is our homemade rosemary focaccia, just enough to soak up some of that sauce.

My friend's about to get here, and we had a long day of surfing, and we can't wait to dig into this acqua pazza.

Thank you so much for watching.

I'm Lauren Furey and catch you next time on Now We're Cookin'.

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