5 Easy Christmas Eve Dinner Recipes

These 5 easy Christmas Eve dinner recipes make an elegant Christmas Eve dinner. Begin dinner with clams, then have beef, roasted peppers and winter squash. End the dinner with a rich chocolate mousse.

To make clams casino as part of your Christmas Eve dinner, you will need:

• 1 dozen bottleneck clams
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 tablespoons red pepper, minced
• 4 slices bacon
• 3 tablespoons bread crumbs
• 3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Open clams, loosen the meat and pour off the liquid.
2. Cook bacon until almost done but still soft. Cut into one inch pieces.
3. Mix the butter with the garlic. On each clam put a teaspoon of the butter, a teaspoon of red pepper, a pieced of bacon and cover with breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese.
4. Bake on a cookie sheet for ten minutes until browned. Serve with lemon wedges before dinner.

To make baked acorn squash for dinner, you will need:

• 2 acorn squash, halved and seeded
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup butter, diced
• 6 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place squash in a shallow baking pan, cut side down. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until tender.
2. Turn cut side up. Season with salt and pepper. Dot with butter and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Bake for twenty minutes more.

If you want to make beef stroganoff for dinner, you will need:

• 1 /12 pound of beef fillet
• 3 tablespoon of butter, divided
• 3/4 tablespoon onion, grated
• 3/4 pound mushrooms, sliced
• Salt and pepper
• Pinch of ground nutmeg
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 package wide noodles, boiled and drained

1. Cut the beef in to half-inch slices, across the grain. Then cut strips one-inch wide.
2. Melt butter in a saucepan. Sauté the onion for two minutes. Then sauté the beef for five minutes. Remove and keep hot.
3. Sauté the mushrooms in the pan. Add the beef to the pan. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Add dry wine and heat for one minute. Then add sour cream and serve over noodles.

Adapted from the "Joy of Cooking" by Irma Rombauer.

To make these colorful roasted red peppers, you will need:

• 4 red bell peppers
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• Salt and black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Put the peppers in a roasting pan and put on the top rack of the oven. Roast turning the peppers often until the peppers are cooked and the skins are blistered.
2. Place the peppers in a plastic bag and seal the bag. Let them cool for at least ten minutes.
3. Remove the peppers from the bag. Peel them, take out the seeds and stem and slice into wide strips.
4. Whisk together the olive oil and vinegar with the salt and pepper. Marinate the peppers in the mixture for at least one hour.

Recipe from the kitchen of Piera Massola of Genova, Italy.

If you want to make chocolate mousse as a sweet end to your Christmas Eve dinner, you will need:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons rum
• 1/4 pound semisweet chocolate
• 3 tablespoons whipping cream
• 2 egg whites, stiffly beaten
• 2 cups whipped cream

1. Put the rum and sugar in a saucepan. Cook until the rum until dissolved, making a syrup.
2. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Once it is melted, stir in whipping cream. Add the rum sugar syrup to the melted chocolate. Let cool.
3. Fold the egg whites and whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. Chill for two hours before dinner in individual serving glasses.

Adapted from "The Silver Palate Cookbook" by Sheila Lufkins.