It must be the time of year--these final weeks leading up to Christmas--that is why I can't stop thinking about FOOD! There are so many great traditions to look forward to. Being an Italian American, I get to eat homemade spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, fettuccini alfredo and baked ziti all the time, but when the holidays roll around, I'm actually more excited to eat fish. Yeah, you read it right. And not just fish sticks and tartar sauce, I'm talking fish that most kids would gag over. Yes, I, Jennifer, look forward to smelly, fishy foods with tails and tentacles on Christmas Eve. Now, how could a person who ate homemade spaghetti every Sunday be convinced to eat fish on such an important holiday and actually enjoy it?
When I was a kid, our family ate at least seven different kinds of fish on Christmas Eve; a gluttonous feast prepared every year by an epicurean trinity: My Nana, my Grandma and my Mom. There was no arguing with the trinity about the menu. Each of these women took a shine to a certain dish, which through the years became her specialty.
Nana's favorite was the calamari and the squid. Standing no more than five feet, Nana would fight with the best of the Italian ladies on Tremont Avenue's fish market to pick out the absolute freshest squid she could buy. "Nothing but the best for her family," Nana would say. Watching her prepare these tiny, tentacled creatures was less than appetizing. But she did season, batter, bread, and fry each wriggly piece so that when they were dipped in freshly made tomato sauce, they just tasted like butter! My dad literally salivates at the mere thought of Nana's calamari and I remember even as a kid, watching him eat them and thinking how much he resembled a little boy in a sandbox!
Next, was Grandma's fresh shrimp cocktail. Just as fresh as Nana's squid, Grandma's shrimp lived up to the name "fruit of the sea" because they would pop like a sweet, ripe orange when you bit into one. Grandma sat me down in her kitchen when I was about eight years old to teach me how to properly de-vein a shrimp. Keep in mind, in my family activities such as these are considered a rite of passage. Grandma said, "If you position the knife at the tippy top of the shrimp's back and make a slice all the way down to the tale, the vein will just slide right out!" And she was right. Through her expert teachings, my shrimp cleaning skills far exceed many adults; though describing the process to my girlfriends at school did not win me any popularity contests!
Finally, there was Mom's breaded and fried flounder. Oh! My mouth is watering just thinking about it! Every Christmas Eve, after mass, my Mom and I would wrap ourselves in aprons so as not to ruin our dresses. It was my job to sprinkle bread crumbs in one plate and flour in another while Mom would wash the fish and beat the eggs. Then, the assembly line would begin. I would cover each piece of fish in flour and egg and pass it off to Mom who was in charge of breading and frying. And while our fish was being prepared, we had this great tradition of singing and dancing to this Christmas tape she bought in a drug store with all these really funny Christmas songs that, to this day, I've never heard anywhere else. Those songs, the fried flounder and my mother's arms working diligently next to mine for all those years are memories I will remember every Christmas Eve. I still have that cassette tape!
Well, there you have it. The trinity of yum. I'm not sure who made the rest of the seven fish. Sometimes, Nana would do more than one, sometimes an aunt or cousin would bring some, but we have always enjoyed a giant fish dinner the night before Christmas. Somehow, many years later, it's not the toys I remember most or the snow, or pretty Christmas dresses, it's the fish and the amazing trinity who taught me how to cook it.