Quick Christmas Appetizers

Food and Wine magazine has assembled a slideshow of quick and delicious Christmas appetizers, but I know of one that's even quicker: smoked salmon spread from Whole Foods. Can't go wrong there or with anything else in its vicinity, like the precooked shrimp. And it's a helpful spot for getting your fish count up to seven for the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve Lasagna From Cured

I'll be working on my Feast of the Seven Fishes for Christmas Eve, but it you'd like an easy and delicious alternative for that busy evening, our wonderful local store Cured is offering a special lasagna by advance order. Here are the details from them:

Christmas Eve Lasagna: It just so happens that Christmas Eve happens to fall on our very favorite night of the week, which means rather than milk and cookies, Santa is 

asking for Wednesday Night Pasta this year. Brad is making something special for the 24^th: Lasagna Bolognese.  Ours is made with hand rolled lasagna noodles, house made fresh cream ricotta and a 12-hour simmered Bolognese with Pancetta, Colorado’s Best Beef and Tender Belly Ground Pork. Dinner for two, with leftovers for a certain big-bellied man, costs $24 and is only available through pre-order. It will be ready to pick up Wednesday morning. 

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.