Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever by Diane Phillips Page B

but vegetable stock works as well. In this soup, the miso and shiitakes simmer to produce a delicious broth that infuses flavor into the shrimp and tofu.
    2 tablespoons vegetable oil
    1 clove garlic, minced
    1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
    8 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, caps sliced
    ¼ cup light miso paste
    6 cups vegetable or chicken broth
    2 teaspoons soy sauce
    1 pound firm tofu, cut into ½-inch cubes
    1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails removed
    6 green onions, finely chopped
    Toasted sesame oil for drizzling
    Toasted sesame seeds for garnishing
    heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add the garlic and ginger and sauté until they are fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the mushrooms and toss with the garlic and ginger.
    transfer the contents of the skillet to the insert of a 5- to 7-quart slow cooker. Stir in the miso, broth, and soy sauce.
    cover and cook on high for 2½ to 3 hours. Add the tofu and shrimp, cover, turn the cooker to low, and cook until the shrimp are pink and cooked through, about 30 minutes.
    add the green onions to the soup and serve drizzled with the sesame oil and garnished with sesame seeds.
    serves 8

Sailors’ Shellfish Stew
    Cioppino is a regional dish from the San Francisco Bay Area. In the days when fishing fleets plied the cold waters off San Francisco, fishermen would return and use the scraps from their hauls to make a delicious stew, which they called cioppino. A quick check with any fishing community will tell you they all have some kind of soup or stew made with bits and leftovers. This one shows its Italian influences in the garlic, tomato, basil, and oregano. In San Francisco they serve this with crusty sourdough bread, which you can purchase in most areas of the country. If you can’t find sourdough, a crusty French or Italian loaf sops up the flavorful juices just as well.
    ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
    1 medium onion, finely chopped
    3 cloves garlic, minced
    1 medium green bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped
    1½ teaspoons dried oregano
    1½ teaspoons dried basil
    1 / 8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
    1½ cups white wine
    One 28- to 32-ounce can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped
    3 tablespoons tomato paste
    One 8-ounce bottle clam juice
    1 bay leaf
    ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
    1 large Dungeness crab or 4 large king crab legs, cracked and cut into bite-size pieces (see savvy)
    2 lobster tails, split and cut into 1-inch chunks
    1 pound sea bass, cut into 1-inch chunks
    ¾ pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
    24 littleneck clams, shells scrubbed
    ½ cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley for garnishing
    heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, bell pepper, oregano, basil, and red pepper flakes and sauté until the onion is softened, about 3 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the wine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan, and bring to a boil. Reduce by half.
    transfer the contents of the skillet to the insert of a 5- to 7-quart slow cooker. Stir in the tomatoes, tomato paste, clam juice, bay leaf, and pepper. Cover and cook on low for 5 hours. Add the crab, lobster, sea bass, shrimp, and clams.
    cover and cook on low for 1 hour, until the shrimp are pink and the clams have opened. Discard the bay leaf and any clams that have not opened. Carefully stir the stew, being careful not to break up the sea bass chunks.
    serve the stew garnished with the parsley.
    serves 8
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    seafood savvy
    The shells from the seafood add flavor, and I recommend that you cut them with kitchen shears so that they are easier to dig into when served.

Seafood Jambalaya
    Jambalaya is a Cajun rice dish that is the perfect one-pot meal. It’s not so much a soup as an explosion of rice, vegetables, spices, seafood, and spicy sausage. I love to serve this to a crowd—it’s simple to get the base ready to go, add the rest of the ingredients, and let the slow cooker work its magic. Serve the