Feast of the Seven Fishes: 12 Seafood Recipes for Christmas Eve

Debi Mazar and Gabriele Corcos riff on classic Southern Italian puttanesca with their Sicilian Cherry Tomato Sauce, here made with fresh tomatoes. The recipe calls for wild sea bass, but Mazar and Corcos like to make it with almost any fish, especially rich and oily ones like mackerel or bluefish.

A citrusy, sharp dry white would offer a welcome contrast to the briny mussels and clams. Look for an Italian Pinot Grigio.

F&W Best New Chef Eli Kulp prepares this dramatic seafood pasta dish with freshly made, toothsome black-and-white noodles, which he tosses with a big, briny seafood sauce and finishes with spicy pickled cherry peppers.

In this luscious, tomato-rich stew, Marco Canora cooks calamari slowly until it becomes supertender.

To bridge the many flavors in this spicy dish, consider a bracing, savory Italian Pinot Grigio.

This tangy, buttery salmoriglio sauce—a Sicilian classic—is spectacularly delicious with many kinds of fish, not just those specified here; it's always best to simply trust your eyes and nose and buy what's freshest at the fish market.

Chef Chris Cosentino pan-fries the omega-3-rich fish with an exhilarating mix of olives, capers, lemon zest, parsley and chiles.

This elegant (and sufficiently spicy) recipe calls for hot paprika and parsley.

When presenting their lemony smoked-fish salad, co-chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo spread out the colorful ingredients—avocados, grapefruit, radishes, arugula and chunks of smoked trout—on plates. For a garnish, the pair ingeniously bake the smoked-trout skin until it's crisp, then break it up into shards.

Chef Carlo Mirarchi often makes this dish with sepia (cuttlefish) and hyssop, an herb with a minty licorice flavor. This version, which calls for easier-to-find squid and fresh mint, is also delicious.

This Fried napolitano snack is flavored with anchovies.

Sweet-tasting lump crab is sold precooked, so it's perfect for a fast meal. Melissa Rubel uses it here in a crunchy salad that gets a double dose of nutty flavor from walnuts and walnut oil.