The Feast of the Seven Fishes

-There are two things new Food Babies contributor Lindsay (better known as “Gio”) never wanted to do in life: teach or cook. Imagine her surprise when she found herself teaching at a school for the Deaf as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya with little access to restaurants and no refrigerator (or electricity or running water or indoor toilet, for that matter). Luckily, the challenge of cooking tasty meals from limited ingredients with nothing but a tiny kerosene camping stove quickly blossomed into a passion for culinary creativity. Upon her return to the States, Gio moved to Chicago where she was quickly introduced to many of the city’s gastronomic haunts by fellow Food Babies Jess and Keith. Gio values tradition and the company of family and friends in her dining experiences.

I’m pretty sure the exact moment I won Keith over as a friend was when I taught him how to clean raw squid back in the summer of 2008. Isn’t that always the case? Ladies, if you want to impress your best friend’s boyfriend, I suggest it involve: 1) food, and 2) something disgusting. A difficult combination, I realize; but have you ever seen raw squid?

Yikes

 Exactly.

But this is a Food Blog, not a How To Impress Men You’re Not Romantically Interested In Blog, so I will save these lessons for another time. Also, I’m kind of giving away Jess and Keith’s wedding speech.

I digress.

Back to cleaning the aforementioned tentacled sea creature. Like any typical Italian child, I honed this rare talent helping my father (who we will henceforth refer to as “Papa Gio”) prepare dinner every Christmas Eve. For Italians, especially Italians who are Catholic (double whammy), Christmas Eve is often a “bigger deal” than Christmas Day. In observance of abstaining from eating meat products on Holy Days, many Italians celebrate Christmas Eve by preparing The Feast of the Seven Fishes; or in Italian, Festa Dei Sette Pesci. Wikipedia has conflicting views as to why the number of fishes is seven. But according to my Grandma Rose, whose full name is Rosario Rita Rizzo Giovannitti (which obviously indicates she is superior to Wikipedia in regards to Italian tradition), the number seven refers to the Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church. Period. End of story.

Growing up in Dallas, away from Papa Gio’s side of the family in Pittsburgh, we had a more relaxed version of The Feast. We never ate seven fishes; usually two at the most – stuffed calamari (this is where the squid cleaning came into play) and my Great Uncle Freddy’s linguine with clam sauce. A delicious meal I looked forward to every year.

Papa Gio moved back to da ‘Burgh after my sisters and I graduated high school. Since then, because of time constraints and travel logistics surrounding the holiday season, I have not been able to consume The Feast for a number of years. And never have I celebrated it with my entire extended family in Steeler Nation.

This year was a little different.

On December 24, 2010, I found myself sitting at my Grandma Rose’s dining room table with my very loud, very hungry, very Italian family.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes began.

Before we ate dinner, we ate some other food that could have also easily been dinner. The term “appetizers” does not exist in the Giovannitti Family vocabulary.

Fish 1 – Raw Shrimp 

 Fish 2 – Crab Dip

Fish 3 – Fresh Salmon (flown in from Pike Place Market in Seattle)

Fish 4 – Fresh Oysters (also from Pike Place)

Fish 5 – Smelt 

After pre-dinner came real dinner.

Fish 6 – Fried Shrimp

Fish 7 – Baccalà (salt cod)

Fish 8 – King Crab Legs ($250 worth to be exact)

 Fish 9 – Stuffed Calamari 

 Rigatoni  

Meatballs made from the Giovannitti Secret Family Recipe 

(we cheat with the whole “no meat” thing, don’t tell) 

 Perhaps you noticed the number of fishes exceeded seven. That’s quite irrelevant. My Grandma Rose gave no explanation of the surplus of fish. Instead she responded with a shrug and commanded: “Eat more, Lindsay.”

After dinner, of course, came dessert.

Apricot Sugar Cookie Rolls

Other Sorted Desserts – biscotti, pizzels, 

Godiva chocolate cups filled with Godiva liqueur mousse 

and topped with fresh berries, cookies, etc. 

Obviously, drinking copious amounts of wine was also involved. 

If the wine is homemade by your dad and your Uncle Mark, even better.

If you’re wondering what a person looks like after eating this meal, it is like this:

When you’ve reached this state, I suggest putting on stretchy pants and watching one of the following movies: Christmas Vacation, White Christmas, A Christmas Story, or It’s a Wonderful Life.

Then go to sleep, wake up, open prizes, and… guess what? Time for more eating. It’s Christmas Day, after all. On Christmas day, typical American holiday food (chicken, potatoes, etc.) was served to a “small” group of 22 family and friends.

The next time you dine on Christmas Eve, be sure it’s with the Giovannitti Family; we’d love to have you.

As we say in Pittsburgh: Merry Christmas an’ ‘at, you jagoffs!

-Lindsay