Feast of the Seven Tinned Fishes recipes: Avoid chaos by opening cans

August 31, 2024

Can you even have Christmas without chaos?

Would we even recognize the holiday without it? Sure, there’s “Silent Night,” but there’s also “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” There’s “Miracle on 34th Street,” but then there’s the entire Home Alone franchise. There are saccharine-sweet Hallmark movies, but there’s also … well, did you watch the second season of “The Bear”?

Spoiler alert, but it’s been out for almost six months, so it feels like fair game: One of the episodes is about the Feast of the Seven Fishes. And, to be fair, every time that particular Italian American Christmas Eve tradition is the plot line of a script, there is always chaos.

Get the recipe: Oysters Rockefeller on Toast

How could there not be? There’s usually a big family gathering, so they’re feeding a lot of people, and there are seven dishes to cook and serve. That’s a lot! And they’re fish! Fish can be persnickety. It all requires military precision for timing, coordination and, to be honest, spending.

Regardless, it’s a feast I’ve always wanted to tackle. I like nothing more than a challenge wrapped in a kitchen project. But I’ve never tried it, and all the reasons are in that episode of “The Bear.”

There’s a lot of yelling, vodka, so much swearing, gurgling cauldrons of red sauce, the good silverware hurled as medieval weaponry, unseasonal greetings, gloriously gratuitous John Mulaney, a car through the front window and why won’t someone just bring the expletive saltines that Jamie Lee Curtis’s heartbreakingly unhinged character calls for again and again?

Get the recipe: Octopus on Cucumber With Hummus and Olive

It was a letter-perfect dramatization of how I always imagined it would go if I tried to pull off this meal, if only I could get Mulaney to RSVP. For these reasons and more, I often end up ordering seven pieces of nigiri from my favorite takeout sushi joint most Christmas Eves and calling it even.

But now I felt a need not just to make the feast for myself, but also to defeat chaos; I want to make it, and make it easy. And I want to do it all for Jamie Lee Curtis. Not because she was my teenage crush … okay, not just because of that. I just think she deserves it after enduring all that dramatized trauma.

Get the Recipe: Anchovies on Toast With Orange and Orange Butter

I found the answer in the supermarket. See, if I wanted to cook seven fish for a special occasion, I would normally go to my specialty seafood shop and determine which specimens looked freshest and most pristine. But at every normal supermarket, there is a spot in one of the aisles that has fish, floor to ceiling, that’s already cooked and ready to go.

The tinned fish section.

Usually I just fly by this area, grabbing a can of tuna if I have a notion. But when I stopped to look, actually look, I saw close to a dozen options. Getting seven different ones would be easy!

Get the Recipe: Sardines on Toast With Lemon-Mustard Crema

Then I decided that instead of telling you about how I came up with all the recipes, I would draft out a script for the least dramatic — and possibly shortest — seven-fishes feast episode of television ever conceived. And if anyone wants to pick this show up, my only demand is that Curtis gets to star.

And, scene:

It’s the day before the dinner, and Curtis’s character — let’s call her Jamie — is in her kitchen because she realizes she can get most of the hard tasks done right now. In less than an hour, she has made a compound citrus butter that will go with the anchovies, a mayo flavored with reduced sherry vinegar to go with the tuna, a lemon-mustard crema to go with the sardines, a trout mousse and a quick-pickling brine to marinate the mussels in. That all goes in the fridge, then she pours a glass of wine and sits in front of the television. Deep down, Jamie isn’t really a Christmas person, we learn, so she decides to watch a horror movie. She cues up “Halloween,” then breaks the fourth wall, staring at the camera with a sly smile. “Never bet against Laurie Strode,” she says, then winks.

Get the recipe: Mussels Escabeche Lettuce Wraps

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(Cut to commercial, maybe for some quasi-fancy sparkling wine that goes well with tinned fish, then the scene comes up for the final act, returning to Jamie’s kitchen.)

It’s the next day, and her guests are supposed to arrive in a little over an hour, but Jamie is sitting at the counter, lounging blissfully with a cat in her lap. All of the elements are ready in front of her, and all she needs to do is toast some baguette slices and saute some spinach with cheese and oysters before she starts assembling. By the time that moment comes, it takes her about a half-hour to assemble an array of beautiful appetizer-size bites. The stove has been turned on twice and the oven once. Dishwashing involves the food processor and a few prep bowls. Maybe a whisk and some spoons.

Individually, they look like snacks. But collectively, once you’ve downed one piece of toast with anchovy, butter and orange; one with tuna, celery and grapes; one with sardine, mustard and onion; one with oysters and creamed spinach; a lettuce cup full of pickled mussels and fennel; a cucumber slice topped with hummus, octopus and olive; and a cannoli (!) stuffed with trout mousse and garnished with pistachio and roe, no one leaves hungry.

Get the Recipe: Trout Mousse Cannoli With Pistachios

The episode closes with the guests raising a glass to Jamie, the scene lit by the glimmering glow of holiday lights and everyone smiling.

And as the camera fades to black, you hear a car crash through the front window. (We’ll see how that last part goes over with test audiences. It’s just an idea.)

If you want to create this menu on Christmas Eve, or any other occasion that might benefit from a low-stress, high-impact presentation, the whole menu will take you about two hours, and at least half of that can happen a day or more in advance.

Get the recipe: Tuna on Toast With Sherry Mayo, Celery and Grapes

In the meantime, I will be here snacking on an orange-anchovy toast and trout cannoli, waiting for a producer to make me an offer I can’t refuse, and for Curtis’s people to call my people so we can do lunch and talk character development and motivation.

A timeline for making the feast

When shopping, keep in mind:

Tinned fish is available at a wide range of prices, but it is one of those things where the more you spend, the better the product will probably be. Knowing that, make your choices based on your budget and the swankiness of your event.
A lot of the produce you buy won’t get used in full, but most will fit nicely in a salad in the days after your dinner. Also, if you make all seven dishes, some of the ingredients show up more than once. One medium red onion should cover all the recipes that call for that ingredient; the mussels call for fennel bulb, while the anchovies call for fennel fronds.
To make the entire menu, you’ll need at least one long baguette, or two medium ones.

One day before the feast:

Make the compound butter for the anchovies; refrigerate overnight.
Make the trout mousse for the cannoli. Store the mousse in a zip-top bag that you can cut the corner off to act as a piping bag the next day; refrigerate overnight.
The mussels and the tuna each employ a sherry vinegar reduction. Double the amounts from either recipe, then divide the finished reduction. Use half to make the sherry mayo and the other half to make the dressing for the mussels. Make the mussels escabeche. Refrigerate both the mussels and the sherry mayo overnight.
Make the lemon-mustard crema for the sardines; refrigerate overnight.
If you’re making your own hummus for the octopus, make that and refrigerate overnight.

One hour before:

Prep the produce and nuts to be ready for assembly:

Cut the fresh orange into small cubes for the anchovies.
Shave the celery and quarter the grapes for the tuna.
Quarter the cherry tomatoes and select the nicest lettuce leaves for the mussels.
Quarter the olives, slice the cucumber and finely chop some onion for the octopus.
Slice some more onions for the sardines.
Chop the pistachios for the trout.
Chop the spinach for the oysters.

Place each of these in small prep bowls, or arrange them on a cutting board or platter.

Thirty minutes before:

Slice and toast the baguette.
Make the spinach and oyster mixture; keep warm.
Begin assembly, making sure you have enough platters or serving surfaces before you get started. It seems like a lot, but when everything is prepped ahead of time, it goes very fast.

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