Feast of the Seven Fishes
A lot of people have told us that what we do is quite ambitious and, frankly, a bit crazy. We agree that it’s pretty ambitious, but we like to feel it’s generally just the “right amount” of crazy. But that’s in general and there are sometimes exceptions. And Ben warned me at the beginning of our 25 Days of Christmas that there was one day that even he wasn’t sure that we could pull off. That day came today with the Feast of the Seven Fishes.
For fun in COVID, we cooked through the twenty regions of Italy and amassed over one hundred dishes. And through that time, we repeatedly read about the famous Italian tradition of a Christmas Eve feast of seven courses of seafood, primarily originating so as to merge together the lack of meat during Advent with the scripturally “holy” number seven. It seemed too good not to try. But that meant undertaking to make a seven course dinner… all by ourselves… from scratch… in one day… with toddler twins … and a bomb cyclone. Okay. Maybe we are crazy
We kicked things off with a soup and salad lunch that checked off anchovies and scallops. We had dinner appetizers that featured octopus, salmon, and mussels. And then we brought it home with entrees of a shrimp pasta as well as grilled lobster tails. And just because seven courses didn’t seem like enough, we added an encore of an amaretto ricotta cheesecake. There were plenty of Italian wines flowing and Italian Christmas playing throughout to keep us going. But we did it! And we did it with enough time to throw on sweat pants and watch “The Feast of Seven Fishes” movie. And although neither Ben nor I has much Italian blood, we felt that some nonnas out there would be quite proud of us today
MENU:
Radicchio Salad w/ Walnut Anchovy Dressing
Scallop Chowder (+ Oyster Crackers for Bonus Points)
Octopus & Olive Skewers
Smoked Salmon & Dill Dip
Pannetone
Italian Wines
ACTIVITIES:
Italian Christmas Playlists: Jack Jezzro, Frank Sinatra
“Feast of the Seven Fishes” Movie
INTERESTING READS & CONTEXT:
