A Traditional Christmas

I was on deck for Christmas Eve dinner. Since we didn’t have company this year, I didn’t make the usual pot of clam chowder. Instead, we treated ourselves to shellfish, our Christmas Eve fallback when it’s just family: a shrimp boil with steamed clams and lobster tails.

The surprisingly-fresh ingredients came from the local Costco. Click here for my shrimp boil recipe. I basically used Ditalini’s Steamed Mussels recipe for the clams, with a small difference: I sautéed a little garlic, four cloves cut in half, along with the onion, and in addition to half a cup of white wine I added half a cup of water, because we wanted lots of broth to dip the bread in. I brought the broth to a boil before adding the clams, then covered the pot and let them steam for about six minutes.

I steamed the lobster tails over the beer & Old Bay Seasoning mix the shrimp had cooked in. Eight minutes in the steamer and they were perfect. We cut the bottom and top of the shells lengthwise with heavy kitchen shears to make the meat easy to remove, and served melted butter on the side.

The bag of clams from Costco contained enough for six. We have a lot left over. Later today we’ll remove the clams from the shells and store them, along with the broth, in the fridge. Ditalini plans to use the leftovers for linguini with white clam sauce.

Those are Ditalini’s eggs Benedict, with her lemony Hollandaise sauce, our traditional Christmas Day breakfast. This is one of the recipes I plan to add to Crouton’s Kitchen soon.

Happy Holidays from the deMenthes to all of you!