Food Notes: 12/23

Artichokes, seven fish, eleven fish, two fish, Brussels Sprouts, and more!

It’s Christmas Eve Eve, which means its the perfect time to talk about the Italian-ish, Polish-ish, Feast of Two-ish Fishes.

Since as far back as I can remember, Christmas Eve was spent with my Godmother’s family. My mother and she traded off hosting the event each year. The number of participants ebbed and flowed, right up until COVID disrupted the tradition of gathering in large groups. For forty-something years, we recreated the same menu each Christmas Eve.

Much has been made in recent years of the Italian American tradition of the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Italian American celebrity chefs have helped popularized it in mainstream American households, and the endless need for more content has led to annual food stories about the feast.

The tradition can be tied back to Italy, where southern Italians celebrate the Vigilia di Natale, the vigil of Christmas, with a banquet of seafood. However, while the meal typically consists of seven courses, its not necessarily all fish.

It’s not just Italians who celebrate the end of Advent with a big fish meal. Catholics more generally will eat fish on Christmas Eve, reserving meat for Christmas Day. And one of the first noted Feast of the Seven Fish in the United States was held at the Polish embassy in Washington D.C., in 1936.

Italian Immigrants from the 19th century embraced the fishy tradition re-interpreting seven courses into seven fish. But for some, that means serving more — 13 fish the apostles and Jesus, 12 for each month of the year, 11 for the apostles minus Judas, and so on. In our case, we served 2 fish, in honor of my mother not liking fish.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes started growing beyond the Italian American community as early as the 1980s when mainstream newspapers began reporting on it, like the New York Times in 1987.

Since then, the Seven Fishes has increasingly become part of popular culture, thanks to the rise in Italian chefs on television, especially Tom Colicchio on Top Chef. The 2019 film The Feast of The Seven Fishes, set in 1980s, in the Italian American neighborhood of Pittsburgh celebrates the holiday meal. The family’s Christmas Eve feast is the backdrop to an indie rom-com, and much of the film depicts the family preparing and then eating the feast.

If you’re interested in cooking up some traditional Italian American recipes, I recommend Daniel Paterna’s hefty cookbook, Feast of the Seven Fishes. Published a few years ago, this hefty volume features beautiful pictures and food stories about the feast.

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My mother never liked fish. Eventually she took an allergy test, and it turns out her aversion might have been the result of a low grade allergic reaction. When she was growing up, her family would make the fish feast, keeping live eels in the bathtub right up until it was time to cook them.

We never had any eels. Our Feast of The Two Fishes usually began with shrimp cocktail, served alongside fresh fruit.

The shrimp was followed by a Polish tradition of mushroom soup. The wild mushroom Christmas soup, Wigilijna Zupa Grzybowa, is served as part of the Christmas Eve vigil, similar to the Italian tradition. The feasts are all supposed to end in a serious Catholic mass held at midnight, though sometime in the 1990s, the local Catholic church adjusted the time to 10p.m.

For the next course, we switch back to Italian cuisine and serve up a garlicky, parsley-y steamed artichoke. This tradition is one that even through the pandemic, I ensured I replicated. You can find the recipe below.

After the bitter and garlicky dishes, we usually had a palate cleanser of lime sherbet. As a a child, this course was obviously our favorite. Then one year ACME stopped manufacturing lime sherbet. What were we to do? I looked up a recipe for lime sorbetto, which is much more tart.

After a respite, we return to the Polish tradition: pierogis. These come in a variety of flavors including sauerkraut, potato, cheese, strawberry, and prune. The pierogis are served alongside our second fish, a white fish stuffed with broccoli and cheese that violates all rules of Italian cuisine.

For years, our Feast of Two Fishes was capped, but then my generation. began experimenting with adding in new fish. After a trip to Poland, I got really into pickled herring, which was not popular enough to repeat more than once or twice. Served with capers and shallots, pickled herring was a salty, if short-lived addition. A more successful add on was lox, when some of the younger members of the party didn’t eat shrimp but for some reason had no problem with smoked fish.

Dinner warps up with walnuts, fruit, coffee, Italian liqueur and roasted chestnuts. My grandfather would always await the arrival of chestnuts eagerly, though I must confess I have never developed the taste for them.

Since there are plenty of people talking about fish recipes, I present to you a simple artichoke recipe:

Garlicky Christmas Eve Steamed Artichokes

INGREDIENTS

• Artichokes for each adult

• A lot of garlic. Like, seriously, a lot.

• Fresh Italian parsley

• Olive oil

INSTRUCTIONS

• Cut the top of the artichokes off creating a flat top; some leaves need special attention to avoid cutting too deep

• Trim off the tips of any remaining artichoke with a kitchen shears

• Trim the base so that it sits flat in the pan

• Finely chop the garlic and parsley shoving both into the folds of the leaves

• Add water to a pot, enough to cover the bottom (if you have a steamer to rest the artichokes on, use it)

• Splash some olive oil on the artichokes and salt

• Steam until tender and the leaves will separate with gently pull

HOW TO EAT AN ARTICHOKE

It turns out, not everyone know how to do this. A number of guests over the years have been confused. Take each leaf off and using your teeth, pull the leaf towards the soft end that was attached to the flower. When you’ve eaten through the leaves, remove the tiny pedals and cut away the choke— the little spines. Below the choke is the tender heart, which is the whole point.

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