If and when fresh seaweed was at hand, Kate and I always cooked lobster using Brad’s fail-safe method, and I pride myself on doing so successfully to this day. However, I’m still not even close to achieving Kate’s repeated triumphs with lasagna alla Bolognese, but I’m working on it. No doubt Felicity will do so before I’ve even left the gate.
7
Christmas Eve
Each year, as the days grow shorter in England, where I now make my home, I cannot help but miss the winters of my childhood, appallingly more than a half a century ago, in upper Westchester, New York. Our home on a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill was surrounded by trees, which by early December were almost always laden with snow. The ponds and lakes would begin to freeze over, and the woods around us became studies in hard black and soft white, making them wonderfully mysterious and therefore more inviting than ever. I loved everything about winter, and I loved Christmas in particular. Our Christmases were joyous celebrations that to this day I still attempt to re-create.
Although my parents’ funds were limited, they made sure that our house was always elegantly decorated. My father had constructed a modernist manger out of scraps of walnut wood, in which sat contemporary figures of Mary, Joseph, and the Christ child. Over the years, other, more traditional store-bought versions of shepherds, wise men, and farm animals somehow made their way into our Gropius-inspired stable, but they always seemed to me to be unsophisticated interlopers. Each year, when this homemade “presepio” （Italian for “creche”）， the Christmas tree lights （the large, primary-colored, hand-painted variety）， the stockings, and other decorative holiday bric-a-brac were freed from their crumbling cardboard boxes, I felt an almost overwhelming surge of joy. I knew that Christmas would transport us out of the prescribed, the mundane, and into a week or so of undefined days filled with endless play.
As an Italian Catholic family, though very un-practicing, we ate only fish on Christmas Eve. Homemade food from recipes passed down over many generations was our daily fare, but during Christmas this practice was elevated to even greater traditional culinary heights. It’s believed that the serving of fish on Christmas Eve comes from the Roman tradition of not eating meat the night before a feast day. In some families this meal is called the Feast of the Seven Fishes, but no one is quite sure why there are seven, other than it is the most used number in the Bible. At any rate, at least seven types of fish were served in my home on Christmas Eve when I was a kid. My mother would prepare a meal similar to the one that follows:
Appetizers
Shrimp cocktail
Baked clams
Seafood ceviche
Stuffed mushrooms
Zeppole
First course
Salt cod with potatoes, green olives, and tomato
Pasta with tuna sauce
Second course
Baked salmon or baked bluefish with breadcrumbs
Roasted potatoes
Green beans
Broccoli di rapa
Green salad
Dessert
Ice cream
Biscotti
Apple pie
Panettone
Nuts and dried figs
The above is not an exaggeration. It was also for only five people: my parents, my two sisters, and myself. Over the years, with the inevitable addition of spouses, children, friends, etc., the number of dishes stayed the same but the amount of food increased.
Allow me to focus on one dish from each course, beginning with zeppole. Zeppole, or “zeepoli,” as they are often pronounced by Italian Americans, are deep-fried, loosely shaped rings or balls of dough made from mashed-up potatoes and wheat flour. （They can also be made with only wheat flour.） When fried in very hot olive oil they instantly puff up and become addictively delicious. Whenever my mother would begin to fry them, the whole family would unconsciously start edging more and more closely to the stove until we were all huddled around her, practically panting with a hunger we didn’t know we had until she started cooking. After the zeppole have fully puffed and are golden brown, they are plucked out and set aside to cool. As soon as they have cooled enough to handle, they are then devoured by anyone who can grab one the quickest. Because my father had very callused hands from years of sculpting and working with solvents, he was able to snatch the hottest and freshest of the batch. As children we tried to do the same, but it was of no use. Our soft palms and delicate fingertips couldn’t handle the heat of those golden, doughy parcels, and we were therefore forced to wait for them to cool as we watched my father try to practically swallow his whole. We did however take great comfort in the fact that he would inevitably burn his tongue or his mouth in his eagerness and greed.