Posted on 12/25/2023 12:24:00 AM PST by nickcarraway
Christmas Eve’s Feast of the Seven Fishes is, by Italian Catholic tradition, supposed to be a penitential meal, and it may be, depending on your view of eel, smelt, anchovies and snails. But for most Italians and Italian-Americans, the feast (also called Il Cenone or La Vigilia) is a call to arms for fish and seafood lovers, a bivalve bacchanalia, a crustacean celebration, a shrimp, squid and scallop saturnalia. But how much do you actually know about the tradition?
Few agree on the reasoning behind the number seven The emphasis on fish comes from the centuries-old rule against eating meat on Friday to honor the sacrifice of Jesus, according to Robert Germano’s 2005 book “The Eve of the Seven Fishes: Christmas Cooking in the Peasant Tradition.” But there’s little agreement on the thinking behind the number. German posits a few theories: the seven Catholic sacraments; the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit; the Seven Hills of Rome; or the seven days it took Jesus and Mary to travel to Bethlehem.
Some families go above and beyond the seven Most stick an odd number because they’re considered luckier in Italy, says Janice Mancuso, a writer and publisher of books by Italian-Americans, although some prepare 10 kinds of fish and shellfish for the stations of the cross. There are those who do 9, for the trinity tripled, or 13, for the 12 apostles plus Jesus Christ. And the truly ambitious take on 21 -- that’s the seven sacraments multiplied by the trinity, according to the Oxford Companion to Italian Food.
There’s no agreement which seven fishes must be used Many believe it wouldn’t be La Vigilia without baccala (salt cod), calamari, eel, scungilli (snails), and smelt. Others add whiting and anchovies to the list. But the biggest sellers at Peter’s Fish Market in Midland Park are shrimp and squid. Also popular among today’s cooks: Clams, lobster, salmon, scallops and meaty swordfish, tuna or halibut steaks.
Lou Palma, 84, has been preparing the Feast of the Seven Fishes for 40 years at his Montclair home, although now his sons are starting to take over over the tradition. He wouldn’t dream of a feast without baccala, dried cod that must be soaked “and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed again,” he laughs. He then boils the fish and serves it a salad with olives, vinegar peppers, lemon and olive oil.
In Italy, eel is a major player in the meal The thick, powerfully wriggly capitone, as it is known in Italy, has traditionally been a sign of wealth, writes Katherine Wilson in her new memoir “Only in Naples: Learning to Live and Eat in an Italian Family,” in which she describes a 5-foot-long eel still thrashing after its head was chopped off. (The chunks were variously pickled, fried and served in a tomato sauce.) In America, the only demand for live eel is at Christmas, says Steve Sclafani of Peter’s Fish Market in Midland Park. The market brings in several hundred pounds of live eel for the holiday, bringing in a special refrigerated trailer to store the eel, which can stay alive out of the water for three days if kept at the proper temperature.
Scungilli also gets its moment in the sun during La Vigilia
Scungilli is the chewy sea snail also known as whelk or conch. Italian food doyenne Lidia Bastianich praises its “wonderful texture and flavor,” but the snail has its detractors, among them the travel writer Bill Bryson (“If you have never dined on this marine delicacy, you may get the same experience by finding an old golf ball, removing the cover, and eating what remains.”) The traditional way to serve scungilli, typically available frozen or canned and already tenderized, is boiled and then chilled in a salad with celery, olives, garlic, parsley and red pepper flakes with oil and vinegar.
In Italy, there are certain Christmas dishes associated with certain fish or shellfish In Naples, baccala is served in tomato sauce, while in Basilicata, it is cooked with potato and onions, according to the Oxford Companion. In Lombardy and Piedmont, lasagna is sauced with anchovies, garlic, sage, rosemary, bay leaves, olive oil, butter and Parmesan. The Romans serve spaghetti with anchovies, while in Naples, it’s vermicelli with clams, mussels or razor clams. Smelt is battered and fried, while anchovies are often served as a salad with oranges and hard-boiled eggs.
As for eel, in Venice it is left unskinned and spit-roasted with bay leaves. “They say ... there is something tranquilizing about eel cooked this way, putting even the grumpiest person in a suitably benevolent mood for Christmas.” (Consider this if you expect political disputes to break out over dinner.)
Some cooks prepare a minimum of seven courses
Others are fine combining fishes.
“Any seven fishes that you can come across,” offers Sclafani, “and anyway you gotta to do it.”
Auguri di Buon Natale! I drive past Casteldaccia all the time on my way to Palermo and have visited it several times. It’s a beautiful little village. I know the bread you speak of - it’s insanely good! If you get over here for a visit let me know and we’ll get together!
Definitely try to make the trip back. Don't know if you've seen Sicilia but it's stunning. As folks here say, Sicily is what mainland Italy was like 50 years ago. Very traditional, very Old School in a good way. My wife's a very hip Brit from East London but she really loves the "Old School" vibe here.
If you hop over and get to Sicily give me a shout and we'll have a nice glass or two of Nero D'Avola.
Yeah, the food here is just nuts.
Well cooked calamari shouldn’t be like that. It should be tender. Before baking it you have to sauté it in olive oil and salted water until it softens. Then layer it in a baking dish with sauce or lemon- breadcrumb mixture. Same for fried calamari - sauté to tenderize first, then coat, then deep fry. The best! But yeah, I’ve had it like you described and its inedible like that.
I hate fish. But I love Italian food. I’m conflicted.
On a Friday my street smells like wonderfully-seasoned frying fish. As I walk home it makes my knees weak because it smells so damn good!
Grazie mille on the invite.
If I can get past the novel seizures induced by COVID and fly again, you will be seeing me at your door.
:)
Thanks! I don’t know if it will happen, money is the big obstacle. My brother and some of my cousins did a tour of Sicily back in August. It was rush rush rush all the way thru. They DID visit Casteldaccia but didn’t get to spend much time there.
My wife visited relatives in Sambuca back in the 70s, before we got together.
She said her pants wouldn’t fit by the time she got back home. All she did was eat eat eat the whole time.
She has a cousin who still lives there. She did Lorraine Bracco’s hair when Ms Bracco did the TV series on the Home and Garden Channel about renovating a house she bought for a dollar. Her cousin was on screen in a few crowd shots.
It would be amazing to visit.
Fasts were in fact moved to the Saturday before. Here are the rules from the 1880s (see p. 19):
https://archive.org/details/manualofprayersf00wood/page/18/mode/2up
In any case, I mentioned the vigil fasts because that general rule is the main reason for the Christmas Eve fast. Sundays excepted, yes you are correct, but it still applied most years. The Friday fast that the author mentions only covers a fraction of Christmas Eves.
As we presumably both know, the 1917 Code of Canon Law did away with anticipating a fast, should a vigil fall on a Sunday.
A tradition invented in America, just like serving spaghetti and meatballs together and eating something called “chicken parmigiana.” Fish is served on Christmas Eve throughout Europe including Italy. This “seven fishes” thing never existed in Italy proper.
Back in the day, Advent was a period of fasting, meaning no meat, milk/butter/cheese, or eggs. Fish would have been served on Christmas Eve because it was still Advent, and because nobody would want to eat fish when the twelve days of Christmas began on the 25th. On Christmas day everyone got to dig into the stockpiled milk/butter/cheese, and eggs, and all the game meat from the animals and birds killed, but not eaten, during Advent.
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