Feast Of The Seven Fishes

The Feast of the Seven Fishes is a lovely Italian tradition for Christmas Eve that I've been getting into ever since having it at I Trulli in New York on Christmas Eve at least two, maybe three years ago. (Leave it to the Italians to turn the deprivation of a meatless "fast" into a sumptuous fish feast.) As a simple home cook, I find it easiest to get most of my numbers from a fish chowder - the two fish often involved, like cod or halibut and scallops, can easily be supplemented with others like shrimp and clams, getting the fish total to four pretty quickly. Starting off with a smoked salmon dip with veggies and crackers easily gets us to five, but incorporating the remaining two can get trickier. Last year I put a bit of cooked crab meat from Whole Foods on top of the salad that went along with the fish chowder to get to six, but I don't remember what I did for the seventh. Guess it's time to start planning. And if you are more ambitious or want to read a bit of the history of the Feast, check out Epicurious' post on Mario Batali's Feast of the Seven Fishes.