cook: a feast of seven fishes

Annually since the pandemic, my husband and I host a good friend, Roseanne for a a holiday dinner. If not an expensive rib eye steak and fancy or elaborate side dishes of Potatoes Anna and creamed spinach, then an Italian cioppino or a French bouillabaisse or a Spanish paella. This year, I invited Roseanne to our annual supper and impulsively called it a Sunday Feast of Seven Fishes. 

I'd pondered the different types of seafood for a stew aloud when Patrick exclaimed, that's not a feast of seven fishes. Because of Mr. Has-An-Opinion-for-Everything, I instead planned multiple courses of seafood for dinner. My cold starters would be dishes of shrimp cocktail, a salmon crudo, and California sushi bites. For a warm second course, mussels in garlic butter sauce (I'd be cheating and microwaving the frozen shellfish from a box bought at the warehouse store) and grilled calamari alongside squid ink pasta tossed in a shallot and lemon and wine and cream butter sauce. My final steaming hot course would be my usual fennel and saffron cioppino with whatever fresh white fish I find and scallops and crab. No need to unbuckle belts or wear loose pants, I was making courses small and the opposite of stodgy with all the fresh seafood and probably a bright, simple green salad, one I once enjoyed at the Basque Cultural Center with a garlicky and vinegary dressing and maybe topped with a little citrus quick pickle of fennel and red onion.  I went to the ceramic studio and worked on a few projects, and then came home at 1 to give myself plenty of time to serve supper at 5. I started with the base for my cioppino by slicing fennel and yellow onion to sauté in my favorite fruity olive oil.                

 

While my fennel and onion sautéed on medium, I crushed garlic cloves with pink Hawaiian sea salt and fennel seed and red pepper flakes.

 

My fennel and onions were taking a while to soften...

....after 8 minutes, they were softened enough to add my garlic paste and a few bay leaves. In the meantime, I was making seafood broth by boiling shrimp shells, which I strained off and then added back into a small pot.

 

I poached the shrimp in the shrimp broth with fennel and dried tarragon and then put the shellfish in the refrigerator to cool.... 

 

....and made the cocktail sauce with lemon juice, horseradish, and ketchup. As an afterthought, I added chili sauce too. Shrimp cocktail done.

 

Next up, California crab bites. I made the crab salad with lemon juice, mayonnaise, chopped scallions, and then as another afterthought and tasting, added sriracha and a little bit of fish sauce.

 

I sliced cucumber into rounds and topped the crab salad on to it. They were kind of messy and unimpressive looking and to me, just meh, but onward.

The fennel and onion and seafood stock was done--I had also added white wine, pureed tomatoes, my shrimp broth and bottles of clam juice. The stock could just simmer on the stove until it was time to put in the fish and serve minutes later.

Show time. As usual, I underestimated the time for serving even after guests told me they could not show up until an hour later. And the salmon crudo didn’t happen. I instead whipped cream cheese and chopped scallions and capers and dill weed and lemon juice into a base to layer upon crackers and add a package of honey smoked salmon. And I wish I could have just made the crab and avocado and cucumber bites into California sushi--I missed the rice and seaweed in those bites. But cold starters are easy, and I should have had my guests sit in the living room and gather plates and food from the coffee table to eat them. While my husband and guests were eating the seafood appetizers at the dining table, I excused myself to start on the second course. Out came the mussels and warm baguette in garlic butter broth in 4 minutes for them to continue eating while I grilled the calamari and boiled the squid ink pasta.

Luckily, I had marinated the calamari in crushed garlic, olive oil, thyme, and bit of sea salt, and the creamy lemon butter sauce was already done and was so easy to make. I minced a shallot which I simmered in a half cup of Chardonnay and then added knobs of a 1/2 cup or stick of butter and then heavy whipping cream and the juice of 1 lemon. I whisked constantly, but it stayed emulsified and was ready for tossing the pasta. I grilled the calamari quickly (only 3 to 4 minutes in my cast iron, adding a bit of white wine to de-glaze the pan and then removed the calamari on to a serving dish. I then tossed the squid ink pasta in the cast iron with all of the lemon butter cream sauce....

 

....and this dish was the hit of the seafood feast.

The pasta course was by far the favorite, but again onward. The seafood stew was delicious too. I didn't mention that I had mangled the Coho salmon while trying to prepare it for the crudo, which was an epic fail and demanded a pivot. While I and the guests were finishing the pasta, my husband was adding Chilean sea bass, the butchered Coho salmon, and scallops to the saffron and fennel seafood broth (to which I had already added a can of minced clams). The fish only took 5 minutes on the stove, and I knew the residual heat of the boiling seafood stock would finish cooking the fish.

This morning, I was finishing the honey smoked salmon on rye bagels from Noah's with Cecilia and bemoaning to her my failed dishes. She exclaimed there were no fails and that there just were definite stars. Yep, and so next time, and maybe that'll be next year, just one cold starter, three grilled fishes to go with the squid ink pasta and 3 different fishes to go into a soup with fresh baguette. Oh yeah, I never did get to make a salad either though the Basque dressing is in my fridge. And there was this detritus of dirty dishes after our feast.

But it's morning, and I'm ready to tackle my list of to-dos for my winter break that doesn't also include going to the ceramics studio.