Christmas Eve

Since we do a lot of running around on Christmas Day, SP and I like to spend a quiet evening at home on Christmas Eve. We like to have some kind of seafood for dinner and this year was no exception. I fried up some calamari rings and served it with some of the leftover marinara from Sunday's pizza:


I tossed the rings in flour seasoned with salt and pepper and fried them in hot vegetable oil. Unfortunately I forgot the lessons of last year and crowded the pan, which meant the calamari didn't get that nice golden brown color. They were still good though, especially tossed with the red pepper flakes and chopped parsley.

SP mentioned a recipe from his childhood for Steak Diane and asked me to make that for Christmas Eve. The recipe calls for filet mignon, but after searching three supermarkets we gave up on finding any (it's a rather popular cut of meat for this season). SP bought a few pieces of sirloin and I made the dish using Emeril's recipe:


SP also asked for baked potatoes, which we had with butter and sour cream, and I rounded out the meal with creamed spinach made with frozen chopped spinach, heavy cream, salt, pepper and a little nutmeg.