Christmas Eve feast


Borrowing inspiration


Because we needed to leave for church about 6:45 pm, we decided to have our main meal at mid-day on Christmas Eve rather than fight eating it and cleaning it up and also getting dressed before the appointed hour. Hubs said he was willing to grill in that case, so I got to thinking about something special to have since we would not be eating Christmas Day dinner at home.

We'd watched some shows on the Food Network earlier in the month on the Italian tradition of the Feast of Seven Fishes for Christmas Eve dinner. Now, despite our hodge-podge genealogy from having had European ancestors on the continent for over 380 years, there's little or no Italian to be found in our family bloodstream. Also there was no way I'd have the time, energy, or inclination to make seven different dishes and we have a couple of family members with a limited repertory of preferred foods. But I'd seen a recipe for bacon-wrapped scallops and that sounded really good to me; not something I'd want to do as a main course but maybe one or two a person as an appetizer. I thought we could handle that, some canned New-England-style clam chowder, and a regular dinner with grilled fish as the meat course. And thus was born my Feast of Three Fishes. (Hey, three shows up just as many times or more than seven in holy stuff.)

I ended up not following the recipe I had for the scallops because I discovered that day that it called for lime juice and hot sauce. I marinated them in a lemon juice and olive oil emulsion with some Old Bay spice and salt and pepper. They went under the broiler until the previously-half-cooked bacon was sizzling and the scallops were opaque.

In retrospect the clam chowder was not a good call. I knew #1-Son is religiously opposed to soup of any kind, but I did not know Hubby dislikes clam chowder particularly and I did not even think of #2-Son's dislike of potatoes. #2-Son ate it anyway because we denied that it had potatoes in it. And there was a serving left over for my lunch later in the week!

I marinated salmon fillets in the standard marinade from the red-and-white-checked Better Homes New Cook Book using a dry Lime-Pepper seasoning I have rather than dill. They went on the grill and were served with rice in a herb-and-butter sauce and crudites (my family prefers their veggies raw -- there are always bags of prepared veggies in the refrigerator).

We staggered away from the table without dessert. It was a chore to get anyone to eat a little something before church.

Will I do it again next year if we're home? Dunno. Maybe, changing the clam chowder out for a mix of scallops and shrimp for appetizer.

Tags: Christmas Eve , scallop , clam chowder , salmon , fish

Posted: Thu - December 28, 2006 at 08:42 PM   Home         | | View Technorati reactions

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