Feast of the Seven Fishes

[Bama-Rick]

December 24th is celebrated by many Italian families with the Feast of the Seven Fishes, were you attempt to prepare seven different seafood dishes for the delight of family and friends. As I write this I'm preparing the seafood gumbo base, and for that night we'll have:
Seafood gumbo
Linguine and clam sauce
Crawfish Etouffee
Fried shrimp
Crawfish pie
Escarole and anchovies
West Indies Salad

I'm wondering if anyone else celebrates this fest and what they have on their table?

 

[CraigC]

December 24th is celebrated by many Italian families with the Feast of the Seven Fishes, were you attempt to prepare seven different seafood dishes for the delight of family and friends. As I write this I'm preparing the seafood gumbo base, and for that night we'll have:
Seafood gumbo
Linguine and clam sauce
Crawfish Etouffee
Fried shrimp
Crawfish pie
Escarole and anchovies
West Indies Salad

I'm wondering if anyone else celebrates this fest and what they have on their table?

Where the heck are you getting crawfish this time of year, unless it is frozen? We still have some tails in the deep freezer from our last boil of the season. The only frozen tails at the restaurant supply we go to are from China, even though the package has "Breaux Bridge" in bold across the front of the package.

My interpretation of West Indies Salad is conch salad?

 

[Bama-Rick]

West Indies Salad is a local dish you find it on the gulf coast from New Orleans to maybe Apalachicola and perhaps it's even monere local than that. It's basically a pound of lump crab meat, 1/2 cup of salad oil, 1 chopped onion, salt and pepper, 1/4 cup of viniger and about a 1/2 cup of chipped ice.

Mix the onion and crab meat, sprinkle ice over the mix, put the rest of the ingredients into a jar and shake well pour over the mixture, let the mixture sit in the refrigerator for a few hours to marinate and chill, serve on lettuce leaves

So it kinda like a very simple poor man's conk salad except white lump crabmeat is $30 a pound last time I checked, so maybe it's no longer considered a poor man's fare.

 

[taxlady]

At one time, conch was poor man's food. I worked with a Jamaican woman in the 1970s. She said that when people back home were broke, they would sneak out to the beach at night to collect conch. They didn't want their neighbours to know they were eating conch.

 

[CraigC]

At one time, conch was poor man's food. I worked with a Jamaican woman in the 1970s. She said that when people back home were broke, they would sneak out to the beach at night to collect conch. They didn't want their neighbours to know they were eating conch.

As of the early '90's the Jamaicans were working 40 miles off their coast, having pretty much wiped out everything closer.

 

[GotGarlic]

I made a Feast of the Seven Fishes last year, although it took the two of us two nights to eat it all [emoji38] Here is the menu I planned - I wanted each dish to feature a different seafood item:

1. Mexican Shrimp Cocktail
2. Asian Seared Tuna with Spicy Peanut Sauce
3. Creamy Spinach, Artichoke & Crab Dip
4. Oysters Rockefeller
5. Moules Marinières
6. Crunchy Baked Pollock
7. Glazed Salmon Bites

 

[Bama-Rick]

It takes us about two days to polish off the leftovers as well, but when it leftover shrimp no one complains. Moules Marinieres is one of my favorites...