Buon Natale! Spaghetti with mussels a Christmas classic

Mussels are an inexpensive shellfish that are too often overlooked in the seafood case. But when properly cooked, they are delicious and make a dramatic (and very Christmas-y) presentation, with flecks of green and red, as they do in this dish.

Spaghetti con le Cozze has been featured in my annual Feast of Seven Fishes at home on snowy Lake Michigan for years uncountable. To me, this dish is like prancing into a soulful jazz rendition of a Christmas classic while the light of the fireplace twinkles in the background. It's simple, it's Italy, it's holiday nostalgia, it's all things I love about this season tied into one recipe with a beautiful bow of Italian parsley.

The traditional custom of my family's own Feast of Seven Fishes began with my grandmother, with the smell of baccala cooking in the kitchen. While I cannot recall every dish she ever made, I will forever remember her beautiful spread of antipasti and my love for her mussels with hot and black pepper she called cozze impepata.

Today, I honor the traditions instilled by my grandmother at our restaurants in New York City. Otto Pizzeria e Enoteca serves seven different antipasti dishes throughout the month of December, while Del Posto and Esca curate all-fish Christmas Eve tasting menus.

The mussels at Eataly, our Italian marketplace and culinary winter wonderland (right in your backyard), are sheer perfection this time of year.

Like clams and scallops, mussels are still alive until they're eaten or removed from their shells, so you'll be enjoying the freshest possible version of this bivalve. If you don't have any pasta in your pantry for this meal, you can grill, pan-sear or slice mussels up raw for seafood bliss this Christmas.