Posted on 12/05/2019 4:41:20 PM PST by Jamestown1630
Not being a great meat-eater, I’ve always been intrigued by the Italian-American tradition of the ‘Feast of the Seven Fishes’ - the Christmas Eve dinner consisting of seven different fish dishes.
I like seafood very much, but have had a hard time coming up with my ‘dream meal of seven’. One thing I’ve always wanted to try are Portuguese Codfish Balls (Bolinhos de Bacalhau), which I believe I first saw in an episode of the ‘Two Fat Ladies’.
These seem to be usually made from rehydrated salt cod (the dried cod can be found in ethnic stores as well as many American supermarkets), but they can be made from fresh fish, as well. They are balls of the flaked fish, held together with mashed potatoes and egg, and deep fried.
Here, from 'Spruce Eats', is a recipe using fresh fish:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/portuguese-codfish-balls-2743408
And from ‘The Portuguese American Mom’, one using the dried fish:
http://www.theportugueseamericanmom.com/codfish-cakes-bolinhos-de-bacalhau/
Another fish dish is something that I’ve recently found at Lidl – they have several prepared/frozen ‘convenience’ items that I think are very good, and I really liked a salmon with a spinach stuffing, wrapped in puff pastry: I went looking for a from-scratch recipe, and found one at ‘Home Made Italian Cooking’:
https://www.homemadeitaliancooking.com/salmon-in-puff-pastry/
Please post your favorite family Christmas food traditions - or your favorite seafood recipe!
(The painting at the top is 'Adoration of the Shepherds', by the Spanish Baroque painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.)
-JT
This month: Lots of Fishes!
I hope that everyone enjoys a peaceful and inspiring Christmas season.
-JT.
“Lutefisk is a Scandinavian food tradition that was imported to the United States. As a Christmas delicacy, it is even more popular in the U.S. than it is in the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.”
There ya go.
LOL!
(I have never heard a good, subjective, word about Lutefisk (not said in jest) from any American.)
But, Carry On.
I barely remember my Norwegian grampa eating it when I was little. All I remember is it stunk.
SWEDISH LUTEFISK
Ingrediants
1 piece dried lutefisk, sawed into 6 inch lengths
2 tablespoons lye
Directions
Soak the fish in clear water for 3 days.
Add 2 tbsp lye into a gallon of water.
Soak for 3 days in this solution.
Then soak for 4 days in clear water, changing the water every day.
To cook the lute fish————.
Tie the fish loosely in a square of cheese cloth.
Drop in a large enamel pot of boiling water.
Cook 10 minutes or until well done.
Remove cheese cloth put on a platter and debone.
Serve with a white sauce or a mustard sauce.
Have you actually eaten it?
Well, lots of delicious things stink. I love the blue cheeses - my husband abhors them, but will eat Feta.
Kimchi stinks; but I love that.
I don’t think I want to try Lutefisk - it’s just got such a rep, especially on the Internet. Lutefisk jokes were all over Usenet from the very beginning. (Made me suspect that it was ‘code’ for .... something :-)
It’s, uhmm, different. There’s a little old lady in Minnesota who says she loves it but I can’t remember her name.
We have Hangtown Fry (scrambled eggs with fried oysters) and a salad on Christmas Eve. We also put out cheese and cookies and candy for snacking.
Christmas Day breakfast is sausage rolls, candied bacon, shirred eggs, and orange rolls, then later we have a traditional English roast beef dinner with horseradish sauce, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and Brussels Sprouts. Dessert is mince tarts and plum pudding with Brandy hard sauce.
I worked in a small office with four men, one a Norwegian, who did the traditional lutefisk on Christmas or New Year’s (not sure which). After about three years, the boss told the Norwegian guy that the day after having lutefisk he either needed to stay home, or use the restroom waaaay down the hall from our suite.
Seems like a lot of work to get a product that requires a lot more work to get edible.
It probably was invented because it provided a means of extending the usability of cod. Before there was refrigeration, that is.
I would never bother with it. I’d rather get a hunk of not stinky fish from the local fishmonger and make an easy dish with it.
You want seven dishes for Christmas? There are many to choose from. Especially if you allow shellfish into the mix.
If you feel a need to be adventurous, I say get and fix some geoduck.
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/10/geoduck-sashimi-and-sauteed-recipe.html
LOL.
My husband’s Italian family always had the Christmas version of ‘Sunday Sauce’ with spaghetti, for the main Christmas dinner (at about Noon. Mom had been making it since the day before.)
Then in the evening, they’d have vegetable soup and home-made hoagies.
For Christmas Eve, they had Pizza. (For 26 years, now, my Christmas Eve dinner has been Pizza - I don’t think that will never change, it’s sort of sacred.)
He won’t give me the Christmas Sauce recipe - he says it’s useless to even try, unless you have tomato sauce made from tomatoes grown by his own family :-)
My grandmother used to buy the Crosse and Blackwell plum puddings, and make her own hard sauce. That’s one of my great Christmas food memories.
I haven’t seen those puddings in stores here in many years.
Ever see the lutefisk epi of “King of the Hill”?
Here’s a < 3 min chopped up summary of the epi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCcgrGYMrAs
It omits Bobby lighting matches to try to kill the smell in the bathroom, and accidentally burning down the church.
The seafood salad at Rao's is just one of the dishes you can order for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Here’s a look at what you can get.
<><>For an appetizer, choose from baked Little Neck clams stuffed with seasoned bread crumbs;
deep-fried calamari, shrimp, cod and julienne zucchini with remoulade and marinara sauce;
a seafood salad made with crab, shrimp, calamari and lobster along with diced celery, Gaeta olives and parsley in a citronette;
Baccalla salad made with salted cod tossed with sweet cherry peppers, capers and olives in a lemon dressing;
or octopus salad with celery, fingerling potatoes and octopus tossed in a warm lemon vinaigrette.
<><> For the pasta dish, you have three choices —
linguine and clams tossed with garlic, white wine and parsley and topped with tomatoes;
lobster Fra Divolo in a spicy marinara sauce
or Tagliolini Fruiti Di Mare with a mix of clams, mussels, calamari, scallops and shrimp in a light tomato sauce.
<><> As an entree, choose from
shrimp scampi,
shrimp Fra Diavolo,
fillet of sole Franchaise with sautéed fennel in a white wine and butter sauce
and salmon Beurre Blanc over sautéed spinach.
Rao’s at Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S. For reservations, call 702-731-7110.
Just a note about ‘Sunday Sauce’:
My husband is just now lecturing me about the difference between ‘sauce’ and ‘gravy’, among Italians.
He says that ‘Up North’ (to him, as a PA boy, that would be New England) some Italians call pasta sauce ‘gravy’.
My husband says, ‘No!. Gravy is meat drippings that you put on mashed potatoes. Sauce is Sauce! All gravies are sauces, but not all sauces are gravies’.
(This sorta Southern Girl is very confused; but here’s another expert opinion:
https://thetakeout.com/recipe-sunday-sauce-pasta-jersey-family-1831469548
One Christmas we visited my Italian in laws in MA & for Christmas Eve there was a glorious spread of seafood. It was heaven!
I’m beginning to think that I chose an unfortunate theme for this thread...
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