No-cook Seafood for an Easy and Elegant Christmas

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Christmas morning is a time of celebration and the last thing one wants is a kitchen debacle to interfere with the day’s fun. When balancing church-going with stocking rituals and present opening, a complicated brunch spread is only going to add unnecessary stress to the morning. At the same time, since it is a holiday, stepping up the usual Sunday morning routine to offer slightly decadent fare seems in order. The trick is offering luxurious ingredients without the fuss of cooking much of it yourself.

Seafood, be it gravlax, smoked black cod, or pre-steamed Dungeness crab is just the sort of luxury we often reserve for a special occasion but requires little time in the kitchen. Intrepid cooks may try to cure their own salmon or tote home live crab to steam themselves. But this is an instance where it is advantageous to leave the heavy work to the experts and use the cooked fish and seafood as a jumping off point for one’s own culinary creation.

Smoked salmon and its Scandinavian cousin gravlax are often considered delicacies mostly because of the time-intensive process for achieving the finished product. All types of smoked salmon are cured in a solution of salt and sugar before being either hot or cold smoked. Most smoked salmon originates in the Atlantic, one of the most highly prized being Scottish smoked salmon. Similar to smoked salmon, gravlax is salmon that has been cured in a similar fashion to smoked salmon but never sees a smoker. Scandinavian gravlax is cured in a mixture in of sugar, salt and dill. In the olden days, North Atlantic fisherman would bury their catch on the coast and the fish would ferment, hence the literal translation of gravlax, "grave salmon."

Even though smoked salmon and gravlax are both highly prized, their relatively wide availability puts them in a category of affordable luxury. As far as incorporating both into a breakfast spread, in the United States we have become accustomed to eating smoked salmon with cream cheese and capers atop our bagels. Chopped up it can find its way into soft scrambled eggs or a frittata for an upscale twist on morning classics. Try making pancakes but swap out some of the usual white flour with buckwheat flour or cornmeal. Make silver dollar-sized pancakes and top with crème fraiche, smoked salmon, thinly sliced red onions and capers for a simple and elegant buffet spread. Or lay out several types of smoked fish on a platter along with acidic vinaigrette, toast points, and a homemade mustard sauce for a DIY sandwich open-faced sandwich assembly.

Shellfish like crabs and lobster have nearly instant associations with decadence, enough to spruce up any holiday brunch spread. The brilliant thing is that whether you live near stone crabs or Dungeness, Maine lobsters or spiny Pacific lobsters, these hard shelled, leggy creatures almost always can be cooked for you by your fishmonger. Bringing the fully cooked shellfish back to the home kitchen, the only prep left is taking off the shell and fishing out the meat.

Just like smoked salmon, crab and lobster make luxurious additions to brunch staples like quiche and eggs Benedict. Crab cakes can be served alongside salad dressed with citrusy vinaigrette or can be nestled under a poached egg and topped with a tropical salsa for a different twist on the Benedict. I like making a morning hash as it can serve a lot of people all out of one dish. I crisp up some bacon and then fry cubed Yukon Gold potatoes in a bit of the reserved bacon fat. Diced red peppers and onions get sautéed in a separate pan also with some bacon grease. The potatoes, onions, red peppers, and freshly steamed Dungeness crab get tossed together and served with a topping of just fried sunny side up or poached eggs with an optional drizzle of homemade chipotle mayo.

Christmas comes but once a year and as such deserves special food that one might only cook once a year. At the same time, the most important part of the holiday is family and time not slaving in the kitchen is time well spent with loved ones. Let the fish experts take some stress out of the breakfast process and use their already cured salmon or steamed crab to give an indulgent twist to the usual morning fare, worthy of a special day but leaving you with more time for the special people in your life.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 5 slices thick cut bacon
• 3 large Yukon gold potatoes
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 large onion
• 1 red pepper
• 1 1/2 cup Dungeness or lump crab meat
• 4 eggs