Grandma Percia’s Feast of Seven Fishes

A shopper wrote recently about her grandparents from Calabria (the toe of the boot that is Italy). Here’s what she had to say about the holidays in her heritage.

My grandmother is Sicilian. She tells me that my grandfather was a typical “Calabrese” – hard-headed, stubborn. Either way, they are both from southern Italy and always had 7 fishes on Christmas Eve.

I asked Grandma what she made every Christmas Eve and she said, “Well, I just made things that people liked, what the kids ate.”

She never wants to make out like it was a big deal. She says, “You know, I made the shrimp and the lobster and the baccala,” and I’m like, no Grandma, I don’t know, tell me!

I asked my grandfather for some help and he said, “I don’t know. I just ate it.”

You want authentic Italian – that’s it: making and eating food is an immovable fact of life around which all other things rotate, which makes it so obvious a process as to be unremarkable.

After a lot of back-and-forth, this is what I found out Grandma traditionally made:
    •   shrimp cocktail
    •   deep fried calamari
    •   clams casino (remove clams from the shell, chop and cook with olive oil, garlic and breadcrumbs; return to shell and cover with grated cheese)
    •   baccala (stiff salted fish, boil to remove salt, add to tomato gravy)
    •   linguini with mussels and white clam sauce
    •   scungilli in marinara
    •   baked stuffed lobster

Alternatives to any of the above: raw oysters, baked stuffed haddock, or some other breaded white fish.

What else? A lot of Italian bread, eggplant parm, but nooooo meat – we save that for Christmas Day. Mangiamo!

What is your family’s food tradition when it comes to holidays?

[ Back ]