Christmas Eve Tradition

In my family the tradition for Christmas Eve is an Italian-American tradition called the Feast of Seven Fishes.  For as long as I can remember my family on my Mom's side has had an amazing seafood meal on the night before Christmas.  I never knew why, I only knew it was my most favorite meal of the entire year.  My first year of being married, my husband and I were in North Carolina and we weren't heading to Michigan to visit family until after Christmas.  I told my husband that I was going to miss the Christmas Eve Seafood meal that we called Notte di Natale (Night of Christmas in Italian).  My sweet husband called my Mom and asked her all about the tradition and the recipes and then fixed the entire seafood feast for me on Christmas Eve.

Since then, he has been making the feast of the seven fishes (usually more than seven) for twelve years.  We now have my family over to our house and my husband does all of the cooking.  He always starts with shrimp scampi, along with a crab dip with cream cheese and cocktail sauce, smoked oysters and shrimp cocktail.  There are always two types of fish, one breaded (for my Dad) and one baked. This year we had Tilapia and Cod. 

We also had spaghetti with clam sauce, sauteed scallops, green beans with mushrooms and tomatoes and cheddar biscuits. They were just like the ones at Red Lobster only gluten free. Aldi has the best gluten free mixes for these biscuits as well as pancakes, brownies, cornbread and many others.  

The most impressive and popular dish is the cioppino (seafood stew).  My husband makes it with muscles, clams, shrimp, ahi tuna and swordfish.  He likes to spice it up a little.  He uses Giada De Laurentiis' recipe from Food Network.

  The greatest feast of the year!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!