In This Issue Buy Seafood Online The Ultimate Holiday Seafood Buffet Celebrate the Holidays with Seafood Making your party a success Simply Caviar Timeline Alphabetical List of Recipes

Welcome to the Holiday Special Issue

Our latest full issue, Autumn 2005, is still current. As always, it includes great seafood articles, recipes, and our quarterly market report.
Take me there now!

Buy Seafood Online

Dear Simply Seafood^® Subscriber,

I'll jump right into our amazing holiday seafood feast shortly, but first I wanted to talk about the most important part of any seafood meal: high-quality ingredients. When we decided to shut down our online seafood store early this year, we received many e-mails from people wondering where they could get the same quality seafood delivered to their door.

Well, now I have an answer – just in time for the holidays. Last winter, I invested in Nelson Crab, a small family-owned seafood processing company on the Washington Coast. They, in fact, produced a number of the products we sold at our Simply Seafood online store.

Nelson's specialty is Dungeness crab, but they also produce other items, including the best canned tuna you will ever have the opportunity to enjoy.

Nelson Crab has been selling seafood online for the past five years and they are continually adding a growing selection of frozen seafood such as Alaska red king crab and wild salmon.

If you're looking for a source of all-natural, all-wild seafood, please visit www.nelsoncrab.com. And thank you once again for supporting Simply Seafood^®.

Happy Holidays,

Peter Redmayne
Simply Seafood
Founder

The Ultimate Holiday Seafood Buffet

Holidays are Perfect for Seafood. As the year draws to a close, attention turns to the holidays and traditional, festive celebrations that bring people together. Seafood plays a natural role in holiday entertaining, thanks to its versatility, quick preparation time and special appeal.

The French, for example, down oysters on the half shell after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. The Poles and Czechs pay princely prices for carp, which they poach whole and serve with a horseradish and sour cream sauce. The Japanese bake sea bream, a fish that symbolizes the good things in life, for their annual New Year’s holiday Oshogatsu.

To help make this year’s holiday entertaining as effortless as possible, Simply Seafood offers a variety of menu suggestions. You will also find some helpful advice for garnishing plates as well as a few tips for the planning and execution of a successful party.

Celebrate the Holidays with Seafood

It’s autumn. Leaves are turning from green to gold, mornings are crisp and nights are cool. Outdoor activities are giving way to cozier indoor entertaining as friends and family gather for the holidays.

Whether you’re dipping into your repertoire of foods to take to a party, or putting together a gathering of your own, this collection of recipes is sure to spark your creativity and make the season more festive.

There is something here for every seafood lover – and all kinds of parties as well.

Just looking for a tasty – but simple and inexpensive – pasta salad? Or do you want to walk on the wild side by hosting a caviar or oyster tasting? Do you need a quick platter for an office party, or are you hosting a formal sit-down dinner? This versatile collection of recipes will fit the bill. You can use them all to make a spectacular seafood buffet, or choose just a few and serve them as appetizers or the first course. Need to bolster your table setting with something new? You’ll also find plenty of decorating tips as well.

And if you’re convinced that all the preparation required for entertaining is overwhelming, take heart and keep reading. Many of these dishes are easy to make or can be made well in advance, and some just need a finishing touch on the day of the event. Remember to plan in advance, select a number of simple items along with one or two more challenging ones and do as much as possible beforehand. Then relax, dig in and enjoy your party as much as your guests.

Recipes

• Mini Scallion Biscuits with Smoked Salmon Spread and Pickled Onions Recipe

Making your party a success

• Don’t feel as though you must have the "right" serving platters and accessories to throw an elegant party. All you need are some big plastic or aluminum platters. Cover them generously with a bed of colorful fall leaves, sprigs of greenery or a festive cloth, top with a piece of plastic wrap and set the food on that.
• Shot glasses, small cocktail glasses or juice glasses make attractive containers for the Tropical Ceviche, seafood cocktails and such.
• Boughs of evergreen can be a festive backdrop for raw or baked oysters on the half-shell. Just be sure that any greenery and leaves you use for serving are not toxic or poisonous.
• Serving the Sunshine Shrimp in a colorful ice bowl will bring a bit of cheer to even the most dreary winter evening.
• Make novel candle holders by carving a little plug out of shiny fall apples or shiny lemons, then poking a candle down through the center.
• Bright crimson apples make striking place cards when guest’s names are written on them with gold metallic pen. Tie the stem with a piece of gold ribbon and insert a sprig of holly in the top.
• A plain tablecloth becomes dramatic when leaves, greens or pieces of ivy are pinned to it.
• Fill tiny shells with salt and pepper and put a pair at each place-setting for a sit-down dinner.
• Glass vases get a touch of the shore when filled with ice, shells and water adorned with seasonal greenery.
• Tiny rocks sprayed gold are attractive strewn down the center of your table and nestled around candles.

Recipes

• Sunshine Shrimp with Spicy Chipotle Cocktail Sauce Recipe
• Knife & Fork Stuffed Mushrooms Rockefeller
• Oysters on the Half-shell with a Trio of Splashes
• Savory Mushroom and Fish Strudel
• Holiday Bow-tie Pasta, Shrimp and Crabmeat Salad
• Tropical Ceviche
• Warm Crab, Artichoke and Parmesan Dip

Simply Caviar

Looking for an easy seafood dish that's drop-dead elegant and takes only minutes to prepare? Try caviar. If you can make toast, you can prepare the world’s most celebrated hors d’oeuvre.

Despite its aristocratic reputation, caviar is a disarmingly simple food – uncooked fish eggs or "berries" that have been mixed with salt. And while the finest caviar is expensive – as much as $200 an ounce – there are a number of affordable and savory caviars on the market. Besides one ounce will provide up to 24 servings, so a little goes a very long way.

When and where caviar was first prepared – and named – is a matter of conjecture. We do know that the early Persians enjoyed fish eggs, or chav-jar, "cake of strength". The ancient Romans, too, had a fondness for caviala, and may have carried both the taste and the word with them when they conquered Turkey. The Turkish khavyar means "fish eggs".

“there are a number of affordable and savory caviars on the market. Besides one ounce will provide up to 24 servings, so a little goes a very long way.”

Caviar has long been a favorite in Russia, which to this day is still the world’s primary producer. The first recorded mention of modern caviar was by Batu Khan, the grandson of Ghengis Khan, on a visit outside Moscow around 1240 A.D. Some 500 years later the first private caviar company, Sapozhnikov Brothers, opened its doors in Astrakhan, on the northwest shore of the Caspian Sea.

While caviar can be any kind of fish eggs prepared in the prescribed way, the word caviar, used alone, is reserved for what many connoisseurs consider the only real caviar: the roe of beluga, osetra and sevruga, three species of Caspian Sea sturgeon.

The beluga is the largest of the Caspian sturgeon. Exceeding 1,500 pounds and 15 feet in length, a big beluga might carry more than 200 pounds of raw caviar. This precious cargo is the largest, costliest and most delicate roe, with a light, smooth flavor and a color that ranges from light to dark gray. At up to $200 an ounce, beluga caviar typically costs twice as much as either osetra or sevruga.

The most important caviar source in the world, osetra sturgeon are smaller than the beluga, weighing up to 200 pounds and reaching a length of up to seven feet. Ranging in color from golden yellow to brown, their roe is smaller-grained than the beluga, with a flavor often described as "nutty" or "fruity".

The roe of the sevruga produces what many consider to be the best caviar. The smallest and most abundant of the three, sevruga weigh in at around 175 pounds, with a length of up to five feet. The roe is dark gray to black, with medium-sized eggs that have a strong but delicate flavor.

While Caspian sturgeon sets the world standard for caviar, the roe of more than 30 other fish are used for caviar as well. Unlike sturgeon caviar, in the U.S. the name of the fish species must precede the word "caviar" on the container’s label. These are the most affordable caviars, and while few would argue that they rival the Caspian sturgeon, several species, most notably the paddlefish and the lumpfish, produce some delicious and truly affordable caviar.

“The key is to serve caviar simply. The classic presentation is on a point of toast. Take a slice of white bread, trim the crust, toast lightly and cut in half to form triangles. Gently spoon a dollop of caviar onto the toast and serve.”

Paddlefish, cousins of the sturgeon, produce high-quality domestic caviar at a fraction of the price of Russia (as little as $14 an ounce).

Caviar is sold fresh, frozen or pasteurized, in jars, tins or buckets. The most common containers for retail sale are shallow, wide-mouthed glass jars, typically holding 1-4 ounces of pasteurized caviar. Fresh caviar is usually sold in 7-ounce, 14-ounce and 4-pound tins. Generally, if the container does not say pasteurized, you can assume that the caviar is fresh. The containers used for Caspian caviar are color-coded for species: red for sevruga, yellow for osetra and blue for beluga.

Caviar should never have a fishy taste or smell. The berries should be moist, firm and intact; never broken. There should be a conspicuous "pop" to the eggs when bitten. Beware of caviar that has an intense or very consistent color: it has probably been dyed to masquerade as a higher-quality product. The best Caspian caviar is labeled malassol, Russian for "little salt". The size of the caviar is stated on the label. There are three grades: giant grain, medium grain and small grain. The bigger the grain, the greater the price. Beluga caviar is also graded by color from dark gray (0) to light gray (000).

Serving caviar is as simple – and as elegant – as the food itself. Because the salt level is not enough to fully preserve the eggs, it is important that caviar be refrigerated, ideally at 28 to 32°F. Remove the caviar from the refrigerator no more than 15 minutes before serving. (Once opened, caviar should be consumed within two or three days.) Don’t spoon the fragile eggs into a separated serving dish; instead place the caviar container on a bed of crushed ice. The favored utensil for serving is a delicate spoon made of bone, tortoise shell or mother of pearl. Silver can leave a metallic taste.

The key is to serve caviar simply. The classic presentation is on a point of toast: Take a slice of white bread, trim the crust, toast lightly and cut in half to form triangles. Gently spoon a dollop of caviar onto the toast and serve.

And the best accompaniment to caviar? That’s easy – Vodka or dry Champagne.

Na zdarovye!

Recipes

• Roasted Red Potatoes with Caviar and Shallot Sour Cream

TIMELINE

The key to carefree entertaining is keeping things organized and doing as much preparation in advance as possible. Here are some guidelines for which parts of our seafood buffet recipes can be made in advance.

Alphabetical Listing of Recipes in this Issue

• Holiday Bow-tie Pasta, Shrimp and Crabmeat Salad
• Knife & Fork Stuffed Mushrooms Rockefeller
• Mini Scallion Biscuits with Smoked Salmon Spread and Pickled Onions
• Oysters on the Half-shell with a Trio of Splashes
• Roasted Red Potatoes with Caviar and Shallot Sour Cream
• Savory Mushroom and Fish Strudel
• Sunshine Shrimp with Spicy Chipotle Cocktail Sauce
• Tropical Ceviche
• Warm Crab, Artichoke and Parmesan Dip