Before I fell into a career writing about food, I was a picky eater: nothing green, nothing touching. Yes, one of those kids, and doubly cursed with being Italian, a culture that does not take kindly to those who refuse food. And so, when you only eat one kind of fish—and that’s assuming shrimp counts as a fish—a Christmas Eve tradition based on eating seven feels more like torture than celebration.
My eating habits were always of particular concern to my maternal grandmother, Josie. At times, Grandmom Jo was a loving coach, encouraging me to try new foods: “If you don’t like it, you can always spit it out.” Other times, she was my arch-nemesis. The sight of wet bread still makes me gag because of the holy water-soaked roll she once cajoled me into eating on some saint’s feast day.
That culinary trauma paled in comparison to Christmas Eve, when Josie and Grandpop Frank would host the family for the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a custom her parents, my great-grandparents, brought with them to South Philly from Calabria 90 years ago.
Josie and Frank’s is your typical South Philly row-home, with a linoleum kitchen the color of breadcrumbs. A panoramic Last Supper hangs over the table, and Earth’s most ineffective fan whirls on the ceiling. On Christmas Eves, the kitchen a thousand degrees from pots of fish in frying oil, the fan spins so hard its brass base rattles against its screws like a carnival ride about to come catastrophically unhinged.
She’d fry six sheet pans of flounder fillets, and one Christmas Eve, tricked me into eating them by telling me they were chicken cutlets.
A paper towel, folded a hundred times into an impromptu origami doorjamb, cracks the backyard door open a quarter-inch. Don’t even think of opening it any further. You’ll let the draft in.
Josie never seemed to sweat. She’d always be freshly coiffed from the hairdresser, wearing a sweater and skirt—or in more recent years, pants, a fashion event accorded months’ of front page headlines in the Erace Family Gazette—beneath one of the flowered snap-front muumuus that doubled as marinara splashguards. She’d bread the roughy, chill the shrimp, impale stuffed calamari with toothpicks and braise them in what we call gravy and you may know as tomato sauce. She’d fry six sheet pans of flounder fillets, and one Christmas Eve, tricked me into eating them by telling me they were chicken cutlets.
I remember knowing something was off about the taste, but even my parents, the traitors, went along with the ruse. Josie might look harmless with her orthopedic stockings and frosted bangs, but make no mistake, she’s crafty.
The species served for the Feast varies house to house, nonna to nonna. Some fry smelts; others, sardines. Many make baccala the crux of the meal, evidenced by the endless planks of salt cod strung up like wind chimes at Ippolito’s, an 82-year-old fishmonger a few blocks from Josie’s house.
Calamari is usually in the mix somewhere, and, according to Mario Batali, you “gotta have eel, buddy.” At Josie’s, we’d have mussels and littlenecks, scallops scampi and fluke francaise, shad (one of Frankie’s favorites) and even fried blowfish tails. Always more than seven fish, though eating seven was all that was required.
I didn’t stand a chance of getting there. So I’d fill up on carbs—rolls from Cacia’s Bakery, oyster crackers, the requisite pasta course for which I was eternally grateful—while the rest of the family passed around all manner of aquatic creatures, naming and numbering them like latter-day Noahs on a very hot, very fragrant ark. “Scallops,
See, now, the pickiness came from a different place.
one. Swordfish, two. Alice, three...” All the way till seven, a divine figure said to represent the seven sacraments, virtues or days of Creation, depending on which opinionated Italian you ask. I’d be counting down the minutes till dessert, always zeppole (“fried dough” as we call it) cloaked in powdered sugar.
That was the routine every year. As I got older and fell in love with restaurants, I learned to like sea urchin and cuttlefish. I learned how to shuck an oyster, fillet a fish, pan-roast a fillet of salmon to medium-rare. I wasn’t picky anymore, but my new palate still dissed Christmas Eve at Josie’s.
See, now, the pickiness came from a different place.
The dishes, while rich in tradition, were often low in salt. They were also overcooked, fried so hard the aroma of oil clung to the drapes and our clothes. But how do you tell your grandmom—an excellent cook in all other disciplines; a woman with a padded, pink “Discipline Paddle” hanging on her avocado-green fridge; and the person who, despite resorting to trickery on occasion, got you to experiment with different foods in the first place— that her scallops are rubbery?
You don’t. So instead I made buttermilk-fried squid and oyster stew and scallop ceviche one Christmas Eve. All the kids’ table (my brother and cousins, all of us in our 20s) ate it, while the rest of the family deemed it “weird” and went back to their clams and macaroni. But the scallops are cooked by the acid in the lime juice! I’d protest feebly.
Meanwhile, I continued to push shriveled mussels around on my plate Christmas Eve after Christmas Eve, but I wasn’t the only one in the kitchen trying to save face. Even with help from my mom and her sister, my Aunt Madeleine, the strenuous cooking of the Feast of the Seven Fishes was increasingly hard on Josie. Oh, she’d deny it if you asked her, but it became evident to the rest of us. Dinner would start later and later every year, and less and less would be cooked by the time Josie left for Mass at five o’clock. My mom and Aunt Mad would arrive to find a stove full of simmering pots and pans of raw tilapia.
Three Christmas Eves ago, when we arrived at Josie’s for dinner, the fried dough wasn’t done, and my mom burned herself making it. It was as if the doughnuts were rebelling at the ludicrous notion of anyone other than my grandmother making them.
Two Christmas Eves ago, when my grandfather was diagnosed with leukemia and confined to a hospital bed downstairs, we ate Christmas Eve dinner on paper plates in the living room instead of on china in the kitchen. Food in the parlor was once a high crime in the Republic of Grandmom Jo, but not that year. I made a Thai-style tuna ceviche with coconut milk, and ate most of it myself. Sitting on chairs lined against the walls, knees together balancing seafood-stacked Chinet platters, we all knew time was running out.
Last Christmas Eve, after my grandpop had passed away, Josie did not host the Feast of the Seven Fishes for the first time since I was born.
South Philly clings to traditions tighter than most communities, but even traditions can only elude death for so long.
South Philly clings to traditions tighter than most communities, but like the old guard ensconced in its mirrored parlors and pine-paneled basements, even traditions can only elude death for so long.
When my mom volunteered to take over the Seven Fishes last year, it changed a tradition that hadn’t been deviated from for decades. We all knew it was coming, that the passing of the torch was inevitable, but that didn’t make not going to Josie’s on Christmas Eve feel any less foreign. But the bitter was tempered by the sweet: The transition also marked the end of fish cooked within an inch of its life, of smelling like a deep-fryer and sweating like a line cook. I’d been itching to update our Feast by introducing modern recipes to the traditional playlist, and this was (again) my chance.
Despite failed efforts of Christmas Eves past, my mom and I made a plan. She would do all the traditional stuff, while I would be in charge of the non-. We would open the Feast to my dad’s side, as well, plus extended family and friends—people who would eat “weird.” So I began drawing up blueprints in my head. There would be a raw bar! And sushi! And whole bass baked in parchment with lemongrass and chilies and kaffir lime!
So I went early to the local tortilleria for fresh-pressed corn tortillas and broke down a whole side of mahi into neat coriander-crusted fingers to fry and fill them.
So I went early to the local tortilleria for fresh-pressed corn tortillas and broke down a whole side of mahi into neat coriander-crusted fingers to fry and fill them.
I sourced Jersey fluke, local and sustainable, and glazed the fillets with pomegranate molasses. I tapped my favorite sushi joint for a pristine tuna loin and shaved it into translucent pink petals of crudo, garnished with kaffir lime zest and cracked Szechuan peppercorns my cousin brought back from a recent trip to China.
As the mahi grew cold and the tuna grew warm, it became evident I wouldn’t have my modern Feast of the Seven Fishes. Of the crudo, someone observed, “It has flowers on it.” Yeah! Shiso flowers! I replied enthusiastically. They taste like mint and cinnamon and come from a local—
They’d already moved on to the store-bought crab cakes.
Dejected, walking back into the kitchen, I saw I’d forgotten the roasted oysters.
Two pans of Cape May Salts on the half-shell, packed with sourdough breadcrumbs and butter laced with fennel fronds and pollen, Meyer lemon zest, ground star anise, a dab of Sriracha and plenty of garlic. They browned beautifully under the broiler, but I knew they’d sit mostly untouched like everything else, each oyster’s pool of lemony, licoricey molten butter re-solidifying in the well-ventilated kitchen.
Instead, the instant the pans hit the table, the oysters vanished. And the culprits were all octogenarian. They slurped them down like walruses, leaving a pyramid of spent shells in their wake. Though oysters are an easy sell for this crew, who spent summers eating Delaware Bays in Boardwalk Empire-era Atlantic City, Vietnamese chile sauce and mysterious spices were not. So when Aunt Mickie crushed a dozen, easy, and asked, “What’s that flavor in there?” I was suddenly sweating.
And then I thought of Grandmom Josie and her fried flounder chicken cutlets. “Just lemon and garlic,” I answered. “Nothing too weird.”
Josie doesn’t eat oysters herself, but she graciously remarked how good the oysters smelled. This Christmas Eve, I’m telling her they’re clams.
Roasted Oysters with Citrus Butter and Sourdough Crumbs
Serves 8
For the oysters
16 shucked oysters with shells
1-2 slices staled sourdough bread
kosher salt, as needed
For the butter
¼ pound unsalted butter, softened
½ lemon, juice and zest (also lovely to partially substitute orange or other citrus, to taste)
½ teaspoon fennel pollen (or use ground fennel seed as a substitute)
¼ cup fennel fronds, finely copped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
½ teaspoon Sriracha chile sauce, or hot sauce of your choice
½ star anise pod, toasted and ground
Salt and pepper to taste
1. A day before you want to make the oysters, prepare the butter by combining all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and chill overnight.
2. When you’re ready to make the oysters, remove the butter from the fridge and let soften for about an hour. Meanwhile, in a food processor, pulse the slices of sourdough into fine crumbs, season with salt to taste, and reserve.
3. Spread a thick layer of kosher salt on a baking sheet; the salt will keep the oysters from wobbling as they roast. Arrange the oysters on the pans and top each with a small knob of the compound butter. Then, pack each oyster with breadcrumbs, pressing them down gently with your palm to create a compact bite. Place the pans under a low broiler for 3 minutes or until the breadcrumbs are golden brown. Serve immediately.
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