Feast of the Seven Fishes
In our family, holidays are about food. The gifts, the time together, all good. But, it isn't a holiday without a taste or three of something that challenges our conceptions of food and celebrates our history.
Jared is a proud Italian American descendent. His grandmother grew up on the shore in Trieste, Italy, and we work often to honor her legacy as a tough woman who survived the war, traveled to then-Yugoslavia to buy her groceries, and showed her love of her family through her food.
The Feast of the Seven Fishes is not a European Tradition, but it does derive from one. The Roman Catholic tradition prescribes that no meat shall be eaten on feast days, and Christmas Eve is certainly one. Southern Italians often ate fish on this day as part of their celebrations, as fish is quite prevalent in the area and not considered meat by the Roman Catholic tradition. The addition of the Seven Fishes moniker was added in the 1900s by Italians who immigrated to America. Many worked on the docks, where fish was also plentiful.
Traditionalists will tell you that a true Feast of the Seven Fishes must include specific things, but in my reading, I cannot identify a consensus on the final seven. Most of them include baked clams and some form of snail. Some include eel as a necessary ingredient. I have not followed any specific tradition, mostly because I am not daring enough to eat or cook anything whose blood is poisonous and I really, really, don't like baked clams. Should you eat or prepare eel, please know the blood IS poisonous to humans and other mammals and must be cooked to be destroyed. Use gloves when handling.
So, the feast. Most of these are items I make throughout the year, so it's not a big deal. Also, this is quite fast and easy to prepare compared to making a Thanksgiving feast. With about 1 hour of prep, you can make each of these recipes seamlessly in less than ten minutes once you have begun your feast. Note that you could technically make all of these to be served at once. I prefer to do it in a series of seven courses that progress throughout the evening, culminating just in time for an espresso digestif to make it through midnight mass. This menu feeds four people a hearty meal in small bites throughout the evening. You want plenty of fresh baguettes sliced for serving alongside.
I have also included drink pairings for those who include alcohol as part of their merriment, but they are not necessary. Note that our pours on each went into very small sherry glasses so that it produces about half of a drink for each serving. Over the course of three hours, that equals right around 3.5 drinks. Should you want non-alcholic options, I think a series of different juices and fruit-infused ice waters would be delightful. Think lemon, basil, orange, or even tomato. They also make incredible non-alcoholic wine replacements now that are basically a mix of brewed teas and other botanicals.
Here's what's on the menu:
White Sturgeon Caviar with Creme Fresh on Blini (Drink Pairing: Prosecco)
Mussels in Bouillabaisse Broth (Drink Pairing: Oaky, Dry Chardonnay)
Fried Calamari with Spicy Marinara (Drink Pairing: Either of the above, or a Red Zinfandel)
Linguine with Clams (Drink Pairing: Pino Grigio, ice cold)
Seared Scallop with Dill (Drink Pairing: Dry, less Oaky Chardonnay)
Butter-poached Lobster Tail (Drink Pairing: Lemoncello Liquor over crushed ice)
Whole-roasted Branzino (Drink Pairing: Anything you loved above that you want to repeat - all would go well with this firm, buttery fish OR a tablespoon of orange or lemon sherbet with a dash of Prosecco poured affogato style).
I will post the recipes throughout this next week so you can pick and choose which you may want to recreate as you enter the new year. Be prepared for a special New Year's Eve post as well. For now, I'll post the first two, because frankly, the first one requires nothing of you and isn't even cooking.
White Sturgeon Caviar with Creme Fresh on Blini
The trick here is to pick decent caviar, because nothing else really matters. I realize this is a splurge, but Whole Foods has a decent line of the stuff and if you've never eaten caviar, it's a real treat. I go middle-of-the-road pricing which gets you a nice can for about $50. I hate to tell you this, but in life, you truly get what you're willing to pay for in caviar.
A little Prosecco helps kickstart our feast.
You can make or purchase the blinis if you like. They are usually placed near the caviar. Or, you can use your favorite pancake recipe and make them. Just make them small and skip the embellishments you would normally add. You want the caviar to shine.
Creme Fresh is normally in a section of the dairy aisle but not where you would think to look. If you can't find it, just ask. You don't need much of it, but if you have leftover creme fresh you can use it a thousand different ways.
Now, if you're ballin' on a budget, and sometimes we are, you can get away with crackers with sour cream and the $15 caviar. You can also mix a bit of cream cheese with heavy cream to make a mock creme fresh. Again - NOT recommended but it can give the general idea.
Ingredients:
Blini or other small pancake
Creme Fresh or alternative
Caviar
Notice the little air pockets in these tiny pancakes? They make them very light so they don’t overpower the main attraction, the caviar.
To Make:
spread creme fresh on pancake
add a dollop of caviar to the top
That's it. Eat it and enjoy your life for a small moment knowing that it's honestly a miracle that any of us made it through this year. Miracles deserve celebrations.
Mussels in Bouillabaisse Broth
Honestly, my favorite part of the meal. I cannot get over this broth and I can be found alone in a corner drinking it out of the bowl like chicken soup if the kitchen gets too hot and the family is a bit rowdy. You could technically just make bouillabaisse and add seven fishes to it, but it kind of ruins the vibe to do that in this occasion and this sauce is not exactly a bouillabaisse, but rather bouillabaisse adjacent.
Mussels are not very expensive and they feel luxurious. They're easy as hell to cook, too. Adults should make the broth, but a toddler could probably cook mussels with little supervision, so I think anyone can probably pull it off.
Ingredients:
1 -2 lbs mussels
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1 tsp fennel seeds
Grating from half a medium orange
Dash white wine plus half bottle
Dash cognac
Salt to taste
1 cup seafood broth - you can make your own or buy it. To make, throw a few shrimp, mussel, and if you have one, a lobster shell in boiling water and let it simmer for at least half an hour. Strain before using.
1 Tbsp butter plus more for spreading on bread
Baguette or other crusty bread
Mussels in Bouillabaisse Broth. One of the seven featured dishes in this Christmas Eve tradition.
To Make:
Start the Sauce
Combine the tomato sauce, fennel, orange grating, dash of white wine and cognac, and seafood broth in a saucepan.
Boil the mixture for a solid five minutes, then turn it down to simmer while you make your mussels.
Conduct a taste test. Add salt until you're satisfied.
Warm the Bread
Place one full baguette in the oven at 300 degrees to begin warming.
Cook the Mussels
Clean, debearded, and rinsed mussels ready for the pan.
Make sure your mussels have been de-bearded by your seafood vendor. Most major providers have done this, but double check. If they need de-bearding, watch this video to guide you.
Soak and then rinse the mussels in cold water to get any remaining sand or other sea debris off the shells.
Sort out any empty or open shells. If they are open but the mussel remains inside, toss it. If they are just empty, set aside to use for your next seafood broth. You can pop them in a ziploc in the freezer and add to the pile as you cook over time.
Once rinsed and drained, put all mussels in a wide pan with the half-bottle of white wine.
Turn the burner on high and let the mussels cook in the wine.
As they cook, the shells will pop open. As soon as the shells are fully open, you can go ahead and pull them out of the pan one by one with tongs and set aside in a bowl.
Once all are cooked, dump them in the broth, let them sit for a minute to allow them to transmute the flavors.
Add 1 tbsp butter.
Finish and Plate
Pull the bread from the oven and slice it in small slices diagonally. Don't slice them thinly - you want plenty of bread per piece to sop up the broth.
Separate the mussels one by one into serving bowls. I prefer a shallower bowl if you have one, but any bowl will do.
Gently pour the broth over each bowl of mussels to finish. I pour it into a liquid measuring cup from the pot first so I can pour it without spatter and easily measure each serving.
Place bread slices along the side of the bowl and serve.
That's it! Easy and quick. If you want to prep the sauce ahead of time, you can do so easily. It reheats beautifully, so you can save it and warm it just before you are putting the bread in the oven.
Look soon for our fried calamari and other Feast of the Seven Fishes Recipes coming out this week! Until then, Bon Appetit!