Feast of the Seven Fishes
This pandemic left many of us with an unusual blank slate for holiday meals, so I started daydreaming about very untraditional menus months ago.
Our Thanksgiving was spent happily preparing and then devouring an Indian-inspired feast of a yogurt-turmeric marinated and roasted leg of lamb with housemade naan, aloo tikki chaat, winter greens and mint chutney. All recipes chosen from the pages of a few of our most colorful cookbooks.
As Christmas neared, though, we didn’t make a menu. We created a concept, a thematic approach to this otherwise unchanging meal, inspired by the Italian-American tradition of the Feast of the Seven Fishes. This is a hotly debated tradition — but if I may — comes down very simply to seven courses of aquatic delights to be enjoyed on Christmas Eve. We drew some inspiration from this run-down of the seven. Somehow our goal had become not just to eat seven courses of seafood but seven types of seafood. By Christmas Day, we had exceeded our goal on both counts. The morning of Christmas Eve, we returned home after a pilgrimage to and hour-long wait at our favorite Portland market with seafood and so much more in tow.
And then we feasted:
fresh oysters with montmorency cherry vinegar mignonette + jamón iberico + housemade ricotta + castelveltrano olives // prosecco
octopus canned in olive oil with sea salt crackers // prosecco
sablefish dip with sourdough slices // saffron chase cocktail
lacinato kale caesar with croutons and parmesan // champagne
linguini with clams, mussels and marsala cream sauce // chardonnay
lox plate with avocado, creme fraiche, sourdough toasts, capers and sliced red onions // coffee (didn’t you see everything we drank in 1-6?)
and then we went snowboarding and came home surprisingly hungry, and ate:
chowder with leftover clams and mussels
rainbow trout stuffed with bacon, onion, lemon, panko and parsley
We didn’t come to (or not go anywhere for) Christmas to mess around. We came to eat.
I hope your holiday was lovely.
