Pups, Platters and the Feast of Seven Fishes

Dear Fish Friends,

Happy Holidays!!!  I  know you, like me, are scratching your head that it is already mid-December!   I am very blessed to see my grandchildren every day; but sometimes I stop to look at them and think, "When did they get so big?"

A new way to gauge the passage of time at our house is to watch this guy grow.

He's my new pup and the very best Christmas gift I ever got for myself!   A mixed breed rescue; his mom, believe it or not, was a shih tzu so his daddy must have been a border collie.  He already had a name when we got him and I guess we could have changed it to something we might have liked better.  But when a fishmonger adopts a dog named Nemo, well, you just have to go with it.

Fin Mail
From  Facebook friends:

The lobster rolls, shrimp, oyster stew and corn crab chowder are D-lecious! Thanks so much, Kathleen! This seafood market has got to be Atlanta's best kept secret. Everything looked so fresh! We will be back for sure!

Jon Anderson

From email friends:

Hi Kathleen + Crew!

I HAVE to have your recipe for the salmon quinoa cakes -- they sound (and look) AMAZING! What will it take for you to share the recipe (I imagine it is Sara I need to bribe??) If not Sara, tell me who I need to butter up!

Love y'all,
Amanda Gustin

Party Planning

Have you ordered your party tray yet?

Smoked Salmon Platters

Shrimp Trays

Hot Smoked Seafood 

Christmas Eve Feast!
The Feast of Seven Fishes is an Italian Catholic tradition.  Many Catholics abstain from meat on Christmas Eve, as they do on many other days throughout the year.  Now, before you object to the next comment, let me say that I am a Catholic and have done my share of abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent.  It's a period of repentance and you are supposed to sacrifice.  What strikes me as a bit ironic is calling a seafood meal a sacrifice!  In fact, the Feast of Seven Fishes is the opportunity to indulge yourself in seafood!   The idea is to eat seven different sea foods in your meal on Christmas Eve.  Why seven?  No one knows for sure why but a few suggestions are  that seven is the most repeated number in the Bible and appears more than 700 times. Seven also is the number representing completion, or it could involve the creation story, the seven Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, the seven hills of Rome, even the seven deadly sins! The number seven is also the number of perfection which, we can all agree, is a Feast of 7 Fishes.

Coming up with 7 seafood items for one meal is not very difficult.

1.    How about a seafood appetizer? You could pick from crab artichoke dip served with  goldfish crackers (this could count as two seafood servings) or a shrimp cocktail or a serving of snow crab cocktail claws with cocktail sauce.

2.    For a salad - fresh lobster meat or Kathleen's Catch lobster salad over mixed greens

3.     Kathleen's Catch fresh crab cakes

4.    Cod bouillabaisse

5.    Cioppino with mussels, clams and shrimp

6.     Brown Sugar Chili Cured Salmon by Jim Malaby from Blue Plate Restaurant in Mullica Hill, New Jersey

Ingredients

6, 6 ounce cut salmon filets

2-2 1/2 fingerling potatoes (boiled in well salted water, then chilled)

1 ounce chives (chopped)

6 ounces extra virgin olive oil

Brown Sugar-Chili Cure

2 teaspoon paprika

4 teaspoon cumin seed

2 teaspoons cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons oregano

4 teaspoons garlic powder

½ cup light brown sugar

¼ cup kosher salt

Method

Take all the ingredients for the Brown Sugar Cure and mix them together.

Using the Brown Sugar Cure, dust each salmon filet, coating them totally, set aside for 20 minutes

While salmon is resting, add chives and olive oil to blender. Puree smooth, set aside.

Taking the palm of your hand, smash each fingerling potato. In a deep skillet with ½ of canola oil heated to medium heat, fry potatoes till golden crispy brown. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper.

In additional skillet with 2 tablespoons of canola at medium heat, add salmon filets. Cook until a rich golden red color then turn over and cook additional 4-6 minutes to desire doneness.

Serve with crispy fingerling potatoes and chive oil.

7.  And for dessert?   Swedish fish of course.

Cioppino Kit for 6
To make the Seven Fishes easy for you, for the holidays we are offering a cioppino kit for 6.

6 cups fish stock

1 dozen clams

1 lb mussels

1 lb shrimp

1.5 lb either cod or salmon

$59.99

Add 1 lb regular lump crab meat - $26.99

Add 1 lb calico scallops - $13.99

This Week's Special
West Coast Dover Sole - $9.59/lb.  Because West Coast Dover sole is a flounder, it works great in any flounder recipe.

Sauteed Flounder with a Spicy Remoulade

This recipe is especially easy if you just buy our awesome remoulade sauce instead of making your own.

In the Discount Freezer
As you know, if fish stays in our case for two days it gets vacuum sealed, frozen and sold at a 20% discount.  Stock up for the busy days surrounding the holidays.  And if you need help cooking frozen fish, check out the rack of recipes next to the discount freezer.  You will find many ways to cook fish from its frozen state.

This week we have swordfish, tuna, snapper, salmon, hamachi, steelhead, Hawaiian garlic salmon, Arctic char, amberjack, monkfish, wahoo, wreckfish, pollack, cod, haddock, hake, drum, opah, branzino, tilefish, triggerfish, sheephead, flounder, rainbow trout, corvina, catfish, cobia, rockfish, kampachi, black bass, barramundi, mahi, and striped bass.

This Week's Catch to Go
You know we are serving Catch to Go every day now, right?  We change the meal every week - this week we are offering

Marinated Shrimp Skewers
Over Orange Parsley Rice

and

Parmesan Caesar Glazed Dover Sole
with Baked Squash and Zucchini

And Finally,
Sometimes life spins so fast we can hardly keep our feet on the ground.  I, for one, have to make conscious decisions to slow down and focus.  This week I promise myself that I will take the new pup for a walk every day, I will read one book a day to the kids and read 30 minutes a day to me, and I will limit myself to three cups of coffee a day (yes, limit myself to 3!).  Exercise my body, my heart, my brain and my self-control.  Sounds like a recipe for a good week.  How about you?

Blessings,
Kathleen

P. S.  There is a little place to make comments on my blog entries.  I'd love to hear what you think.  Start a conversation!