December 15, 2022
Thom Carroll/for PhillyVoice
Nowadays, the Feast of the Seven Fishes might feature mussels, but traditionally it included seafood like baccala, smelt, sardines, eel, whiting, scungilli and squid.
Every Christmas Eve, many Italian-Americans prepare the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a pescatarian's dream spread of fried, baked and sauteed seafood drenched in oil and all kinds of spices.
The emphasis on fish stems from the Roman-Catholic practice of abstaining from meat 24 hours prior to a holy day — in this case, Christmas. The seven is anyone's guess. That number is prevalent in biblical imagery, from the seven sacraments to the seven days of creation to the seven deadly sins. There's also the more thematic miracle of multiplication of five loaves of bread and two fish.
Though the Feast of the Seven Fishes wasn't really discussed in newspapers until 1983, the tradition is much older. It was recorded in print earlier under different names — often generic terms like "Christmas Eve feast" or "Christmas Eve buffet." PhillyVoice pulled recipes from those articles, spanning regions as far north as Binghamton, New York and as far south as Wilmington, Delaware, from the 1950s through the 1970s. If you're up for the culinary challenge of preparing pounds of seafood seven different ways, consider adding these historic dishes to your rotation.
The first recipe is for capitone fritto, or fried eels. It comes courtesy of Tom DiRenzo via a 1974 article in Camden's Courier Post.
Ingredients:
2 1/2 lb eels
1 cup flour
6 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Dash of rosemary
Lemon slices
Donato Pellegrini, an Italian immigrant from San Donato who settled in Wilmington around 1965, shared his recipe for casseruola disarde, aka smelt casserole, with the Morning News in 1978. Back then, he estimated it cost 85 cents to make.
Ingredients:
1 pound of smelts
Salt
1 1/2 to 1 cup of bread crumbs
1 clove garlic, minced
3 to 4 sprigs parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
About 6 tablespoons olive oil
Directions:
Clean the smelts and arrange them in rows in a greased casserole (dish). Season lightly with salt and cover with bread crumbs. Sprinkle the garlic, parsley, pepper and salt over the bread crumbs. Add oil to soak the crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Serves 4.
In 1958, Binghamton's Press and Sun Bulletin printed a recipe "seldom found in cookbooks" for calamaio, a pasta dish featuring a diabolical creature called devilfish. Today we'd just call it squid. The directions come courtesy of John Yannuzzi, and be prepared: it involves many steps, and requires some needlework.
Ingredients:
8 large devilfish (about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds)
1 cup dry breadcrumbs made from a hard round loaf of Italian bread
4 or 5 eggs
1 large bunch parsley
2 cloves garlic
Salt and pepper
1/4 pound Parmesan cheese
1 medium onion
1 can tomato paste
1 large can Italian plum tomatoes
1 dash crushed red pepper
Water as needed
1 pound thin spaghetti
Directions:
First prepare stuffing for devilfish, blending together the breadcrumbs, eggs and Parmesan cheese with 1 clove garlic, chopped fine, about 6 sprigs of parsley, minced, and salt and pepper to taste. The filling should have a taste consistency. Then prepare the devilfish. Pull the head and horns from the socket, removing head and entrails from the body of the fish. Snip off at neck, discard entrails, remove the eyes from the head with the fingers and rinse under clear running water. Set head and horns aside.
Soak the pocket-shaped body in a little warm water and peel off the outer skin. Turn the fish inside out, scrape and rinse the inside, turn back again and stuff loosely with the breadcrumb filling.
Sew the open end of the pocket together with slender string and a wide-eyed needle. Repeat with each fish until all are stuffed. Cover the bottom of a deep pot with water, add the devilfish, and cook over low heat until the fish turns a pale blush pink. Pour out water and add a coating of oil to bottom of pot. Add the onion and 1 clove garlic chopped fine. Cook until soft. Add tomato paste and blend.
Press plum tomatoes through a sieve, and add to pot. Add a dash of crushed red pepper and a few sprigs of parsley, chopped. Cook about an hour until sauce thickens and oil comes top.
Cook another half hour, thinning sauce with water to a lighter consistency. (Devilfish sauce should have some body, but should not be as thick as the 'Sunday' spaghetti sauce used by Americans.) Cook spaghetti according to directions, drain and blend with devilfish sauce. Place the stuffed fish on a separate platter, and serve with a side dish of golden-fried smelt.
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