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DISH
We’re famously a nation of immigrants, yet I’m just an amorphous American, one with no traceable roots. And while my background is allegedly English, Irish and Italian, I never knew or heard tell of any relatives born outside the United States, nor did my parents. Whenever it was that my ancestral clans washed up on these shores, the intervening couple hundred years or so were enough to mute out any traditions they may have brought with them. We never had roast goose or Christmas pudding with flaming brandy sauce in the English tradition or caraway seeded breads, spiced beef and puddings with rum sauce in the Irish tradition. Worst of all, there were no opulent Feasts of Seven Fishes in the Italian tradition. Rather, the Christmases I grew up with were basically a repeat of Thanksgiving, with presents. My husband, on the other hand, had a youth diametrically opposed to mine. His was a strict Polish household centered on custom and tradition, so much so that he sought asylum in my mongrel world. His parents are first-generation American and none of his grandparents spoke a word of English. Talk about a credit card security question nightmare — to this day he cannot spell his own mother’s maiden name and has taken the liberty of shortening “Andruszewski” to “Andrus” to avoid being accused of committing identity fraud on himself. I remember the first Christmas Eve I spent with his family many years ago. I should have brought my passport because it was like stepping into a foreign country. To Poles, the celebration of Christmas Eve is the most significant occasion of the year, even more so than Christmas day itself. The main event, of course, is all about food. It’s a meatless feast known as “Wigilia,” which derives from the Latin word “vigilare,” roughly meaning “to await.” Tradition dictates that 13 dishes are served to symbolize the number of diners at the Last Supper. Customarily, there’s a chair left empty, should a wandering stranger be in need of refuge. I must have been playing the role of wandering stranger on that night because all 23 seats were occupied. The meal began with the breaking of “Opaltek,” flour and water wafers, with each person wishing the others health and happiness in the year to come. Then the cavalcade began. My husband, his siblings and cousins warned me that it would be frightful: herring in sour cream (“sledzie”); mushroom soup with boiled potatoes (“zupa gryzbowa”); cabbage soup (“kapusniak”); beetroot soup (“barszcz”); pickled cucumbers (“ogorki”); noodles with poppy seeds (“kluski z makiem”); cabbage rolls (“golabki”); fried carp (“karp smazony”); three kinds of “pierogi” (stuffed with cheese, potatoes and prunes); and for dessert, Polish donuts (“paczki”) and “babka,” a sweet bread filled with raisins and cheese. Did I enjoy the meal? Heck no. I dared myself to find the courage only to try a spoonful of mushroom soup and a nibble of fish. But there was something so enjoyably communal, and comical, about the shared misery of everyone under age 30. Things were just too easy at my house. The spread typically featured cheese and crackers, shrimp cocktail, French onion soup, scalloped potatoes and ham, my mom’s special crabmeat-Velveeta concoction and her gushy chocolate fudge-marshmallow cake. But while I now have some remorse that my Polish-surnamed children know nothing about being Polish, I’m not sure they’d survive it at this point. Better said, I have a hard time getting a happy mental visual of all of us cranking out homemade kielbasa at Easter. So I’m thinking that what’s best is to try to reset our Christmas traditions on a course of greater significance by dabbling in food traditions that aren’t too cumbersome: some Polish mixed with some of my favorite part of me, the Italian part. My great regret is that my paternal grandmother didn’t live long enough for me to learn more about her heritage. She was allegedly half Italian, “Tranfaglia” being her rather awkward maiden name. For reasons unknown to me and to my father, she didn’t partake in the grand tradition of the seafood feast on Christmas Eve. But he does recall how much she loved making pasta, in her later years even feeding it to “Missy,” her oversized Chihuahua. I’m told that whenever Missy went missing, everyone knew where she’d be found — wedged and bloated under the sofa. “La Vigilia di Natale” (“the evening of being born”) is marked with a progression of seven seafood dishes, seven being a number of infinite religious significance. Take your pick: the seven Sacraments; the seven days of creation; the seven days it took Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem; the perfect number in Biblical numerology; or the seven deadly sins. The order of the dishes, and the dishes themselves, vary from region to region in Italy, and thus also from Italian-American family to family. Generally speaking, though, they include calamari, scungilli (a conch-like mollusk), baccalŕ (dried, salted cod), shrimp, clams with pasta, mussels and a large, whole fish, such as snapper or salmon. I actually did have one incomplete brush with the Italian Christmas Eve feast several years ago at the home of my husband’s former business partner and his wife. Things started out well enough, but it was destined to be an ill-fated evening. The meal began with a marinated seafood salad, followed by grilled shrimp and then fried calamari. That’s when the drama began, literally. The hostess’ step-mother is the soap opera star, Linda Dano. Her presence at any gathering never failed to blur the line between a celebratory occasion and a scene shot on a soundstage, that night being no exception. When one of her two feisty, rodent-like dogs took a chomp on her step-granddaughter’s cheek, the feasting came to an unceremonious halt, right before the pasta course. The baby ended up suffering only a flesh-wound and I actually didn’t have a problem with the fact that it was only a feast of three fishes; seven are about six too many for me. This year, in the spirit of righting the wrongs of my family’s rootless, pajama-themed traditions, I’m planning to go with a little bit of the best of each of the worlds I’ve got to work with. I’ll be tracking down those Opaltek wafers and getting my mom’s chocolate fudge-marshmallow cake recipe. There will be eggs, of course; Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without our eggs. But mine will be my own legacy, a nouveau-old world spin: “feast of one fish” style. I “FEAT OF ONE FISH”
FRITTATA Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Whisk eggs in a bowl with salt and pepper. In an ovensafe, nonstick 10-inch skillet, cook garlic and shallots in olive oil for 1 minute over moderate heat. Add tomatoes, basil and thyme; raise heat and cook until most of the water from tomatoes has evaporated. Add crabmeat and heat through; stir in eggs. Continue stirring over high heat while shaking pan back and forth until the eggs begin to set. Put skillet in oven and cook until golden and bubbly, about 20 minutes. Allow to cool and cut into wedges. Serves 6. |
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