Christmas Fish Recipes

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If you are wondering what to make when company comes for Christmas, or any other time of year for that matter, why not try out these Christmas Fish Recipes. These Italian Christmas Fish Recipes are guaranteed to satisfy anyone's appetite in a way that is not only pleasing to the taste buds but nourishing as well. With so many different recipe options out there, it can be hard to choose which ones to make. Also, when you have different people visiting at your house, different people have different tastes and food preferences, which can also make it difficult to navigate what the consensus will enjoy having. This is why these fish recipes will be a good bet for everyone who is visiting. Fish tends to be liked by most people, even if they don't like seafood or shellfish, so there can be something for everyone to eat.

Cooking With Nonna, the awesome website of recipes from Nonnas around the globe, shares with us a beautiful collection of fish recipes to celebrate what they call the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Feast of the Seven Fishes is a tradition that exists and originated in the Southern part of Italy and is also enjoyed in the Italian American community. The tradition is known as La Vigilia, or the Vigil, and is celebrates the anticipation of the Virgin Mary to give birth to Jesus at midnight. The reason they chose the number seven as the number of fish dishes they have is because seven is the most highly used number in the Bible and shows up in excess of seven hundred times. Eating seafood or fish on Christmas Eve is something that has been done in Roman Catholic tradition for centuries. They refrain from eating meat on the day before any major holy day, in this case, Christmas, so they eat fish instead.

The most popular type of fish dish served on the feast of the seven fishes is called Baccala. Baccala is salted cod fish that is fried in oil, a dish that almost anyone could enjoy whether they were rich or poor. The Baccala can take on many forms, though, and as you will see in the list of fabulous recipes from Cooking with Nonna, there is baccala salad, Baccala' Campagnolo, which is a type of fish stew made with a delicious tomato sauce. There is also baccala balls, which are made up of the baccala, bread crumbs, bread soaked in milk, mashed potatoes, eggs, flour and herbs and spices, dipped in various sauces. They look really good! There is also a baccala and potato dish that looks very nice as well. Other items that are served are mussels cooked in various ways, calamari, which is the octopus, shrimp and prawns done in various ways, as well as salmon, tuna, halibut, clams, scallops, lobster and crab fish all with various delicious recipes to use them in. There are five pages worth of recipes all for the feast of the seven fishes; it would honestly be difficult just to choose seven from this amazing list of traditional Italian recipes.

I always enjoy mussels, as well as lobster and crab and shrimp. The Zuppa recipes all look amazing, which is the seafood basically in a soup style broth that they are broiled and baked in. The pasta recipes all look very delectable too; the whole lobster spaghetti would be to die for! Or how about salmon with a fig sauce? Once you look through these tantalizing recipes, it will be hard not to be hungry and craving seafood and fish! Enjoy!

Learn MORE / Get RECIPE at Cooking with Nonna


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