Feast of the Seven Fishes, a tasting dinner

Several years ago I was looking for a change from our typical prime rib Christmas Eve dinner.  I found the idea of a Feast of the Seven Fishes intriguing.  Many Italian-American families are known to celebrate the holiday with this meal featuring delicious Italian fish specialties such as baccala, stuffed-squid, and scungilli salad.  However, I am not Italian, for that matter the dinner crowd guest are not all Christians, but we all love food and culture so we have chosen this tradition to morph into our own melting pot of ethnicities and cultures for our own special holiday celebration.

The way we do our seven fishes is something very different then what you might expect from the traditional meat-abstinence driven European feast.  Sometimes there is bacon, well…. usually there is bacon.

Our meal is a tasting menu of 7 fish courses with a wine pairing (sometimes a beer or cocktail).  We draw our inspiration from across the globe.  The offerings are always delicious, homemade, and most of all creative; we rarely repeat a dish from year to year.  I believe part of the enjoyment is searching out new recipes.

Over the years we have enjoyed Miso black cod (Nobu style), Bloody mary shrimp cocktail, Cioppino, Bouillabaisse, Lemon crab risotto, Shrimp-stuffed poblano peppers, Oyster bisque, Clam linguini, and… the list goes on and on.  All of the dishes are in tasting portions and are served by the guest who has prepared the dish.  What is very nice about this style of dining is that there is no one cook caught in the kitchen for the night – it is something like a high end of potluck.

This year we are moving the party a few houses down the block, but I expect the same amount of deliciousness.  I hear rumors of a Warm salad with baccala and potatoes, Shrimp sliders, Lobster with local winter beets, and an authentic dish from a Brazilian guest.  I will be making crab spring rolls and a dish from my upcoming cookbook “In season, a year on the North Fork” featuring Peconic bay scallops.

I think I can speak for the crowd: this is our favorite meal of the year.

Happy Christmas!

Watch my Facebook page for some delicious details on our 2012 feast.  

Note: the photo above was taken at a street market in Venice, Italy.