Recipe Ideas for Christmas Eve Dinner with Seafood

For a multitude of reasons, seafood finds its place on Christmas Eve tables worldwide each year. Whether you are celebrating the Feast of the Seven Fishes or you just want to change it up a little, seafood can give your Christmas Eve dinner an extra special touch.

I find that seafood is an elegant alternative to the many heavy foods that are served during the holiday season. You can serve these recipes as an appetizer, first or second course. However, I would suggest serving them together with a few sides for a complete meal. As Mae West, and later Liberace used to say, "Too much of a good thing is...wonderful!"

A couple of ideas for your dinner party:
1. Recreate the backstreet bistro experience in Belgium with a fresh, cold tower of the finest shellfish you can lay your hands on. Serve your Shellfish tower or platter with mignonette sauce. Create by filling a tiered plate stand with ice, arranging cooked or raw shellfish interspersed with lemons and parsley.

2. For a less formal affair, host a seafood boil.

Recipes

Seafood Trifle

Seafood layered among celery root and potato puree and a light lobster Newburg sauce will seem almost too pretty to eat. I love a good presentation and dessert trifles offer real style to a table. So, I devised this recipe utilizing some of my favorite seafood flavors in a very stylish vessel.

Ingredients:
Shrimp, sautéed in butter and lemon
Scallops, sautéed in butter and lemon
White fish of your choosing, sautéed in butter and lemon
Lobster (for Newburg recipe below)
Parsley for garnish
Lobster Newburg sauce (Gourmet Magazine recipe. Why fool with perfection?)
Celery root and potato purée (Gourmet Magazine recipe)

Preparation:
1.Layer a trifle bowl or individual wide-mouth glass, such as a brandy snifter with:
Celery root purée, white fish and Newburg sauce
Celery root purée, scallops and Newburg sauce
Celery root purée, lobster and Newburg sauce
Celery root purée, shrimp, Newburg sauce

2.Sprinkle with parsley for color
3.Serve.

Ceviche with mild yellow and spicy red pepper sauce

This Peruvian-style dish displays beautifully the white fish topped with an alternating swirl of mild yellow and spicy red sauces.

I ate this dish in a restaurant on the coast of Northern Peru. I wrote what I tasted and this recipe comes pretty close! It is a very pretty dish that happens to exhibit the colors of the holiday. This dish is wonderful served with a nice, cold sangria.

Mild yellow pepper sauce
2 Yellow peppers, roasted and peeled (not under running water!)
1 Clove garlic
4 T. extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a food processor or blender, pulse all ingredients until smooth.
2. Taste for additional salt and pepper.
3. Chill.

Spicy roasted red pepper sauce
1 Sweet red pepper, roasted, seeded and peeled (not under running water!)
3 Red cherry peppers, seeded and peeled (not under running water!)
1 Clove garlic
4 T. extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a food processor or blender, pulse all ingredients until smooth.
2. Taste for additional salt and pepper.
3. Chill.

Ceviche
2 pounds white, skinless fish fillets (eg. sole, halibut or cod)
1 C lime juice
1 fresh aji amarillo (Peruvian yellow pepper), seeded and finely diced or a tsp. canned.
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 tsp. salt

1. Cut the fish into strips
2. Soak the strips in lightly salted water for 1 hour to tenderize. Drain well.
3. Put the fish in a bowl and cover with lime juice.
4. Add the salt, garlic, and aji
5. Refrigerate 20 minutes. (Do not leave the fish too long in the lime juice or it will "over cook" and become tough.)
6. Take 2 fish pieces out of lime juice and plate close together.
7. Pour the red sauce over one piece and the yellow over the other. Try and artistic approach with the sauces by pouring them in a yin/yang fashion over the fish.

Seafood Fondue

Surprise and delight your dinner companions with this interactive course. White wine and Swiss cheese enhance the flavors of each morsel from the sea. This is always a hit, especially when served by a crackling fire next to the Christmas tree. The wine brings out the flavor of both the bisque and the cheese. Personally, I like to use a dry Riesling.

Ingredients:
1 pound Swiss cheese, grated
2 C seafood bisque of any kind (lobster, shrimp etc)
1 clove garlic, sliced in half
1 C milk
1/4 C dry, white wine
Black pepper to taste
Sweet Hungarian paprika
Tabasco sauce (Optional. Tabasco adds heat without overpowering the flavors)
Crusty bread cut into 1" cubes
Assortment of seafood of your choice, lightly poached in lemon, patted dry and cut into bite-size chunks

Preparation:
1.Rub the fondue pot with the cut side of the garlic to season and then discard.
2.Pour the bisque into the fondue pot and heat until warm.
3.Slowly whisk in the milk until smooth.
4.Add the wine and whisk.
5.Add the cheese and keep whisking until melted into the bisque.
6.Add the black pepper, paprika and Tabasco and whisk in.
7.Allow the combination to become warm.
8.With fondue forks, dip the bread and seafood, one chunk at a time, into the pot.

* It is traditional fondue etiquette to kiss the person next to you when you drop something off of your fork into the fondue pot. Therefore it is good practice to make sure that you are flanked on either side by people you like.