Gastronomia Natalizia Italiana
Friday December 19, 2008
The community members of the About.com Italian Language Forums get into the spirit of the season and share their own Italian Christmas recipes, including such savory dishes as calamari ripieni alla formiana, capitone alla griglia, bracioline pipiene al sugo di pomodoro, porcini brasati, and broccoletti di rapa e salsiccia affumicata di maiale.
Comments
It happens ro me and many others so often that it is becoming an annoyance. The lasest is “what kind od an Italian doesn’t know about or partake in the 7 fishes dinner?” To which Ihave to explain that there are customs that are followed in certain areas and not in others. How about castanacia? To which they answer “never heard od it? To which I reply there is so much more to Italy than some area from which most of the immigrants came from. Many are so parochical that they know only of the paese that they were told of or visited. It would be like a southerner in the US assuming that northerners have grits poured all over their breakfast and should. I am for opening the minds of people not deriding their customs.
Interesting point about the seven fishes dinner. I’ve spoken to experts in Italian food, and the seven (or nine, or eleven) fishes tradition on Christmas Eve is definitely regional, if at all. It certainly does not exist in Sicily, and if families there celebrate it now, it’s only because it’s a custom that originated in the US amongst Italian-Americans who were convinced that’s “how it was done in Italy” - and reversed direction heritage-wise.
i do remember, as a kid, growing up in an immigrant, italian home that we ALWAYS had only fish the day before xmas b/c it was “la vigilia” & we did not eat meat the day before a holy day. it was a day of abstinence. in my family it was bacala, which is salt cod & comes into the house as hard, dried boards of stinky fish. it has to be soaked in water for a few days before cooking. the water was changed every day & the whole “guazzabuglio” was a veritable “cat magnet” in the neighborhood. the cod was cooked into a very tasty soup w/ celery, onions, potatoes & sliced lemons. that was our xmas eve dinner w/ the ubiquitous hot italian bread, sliced fresh tomatoes, celery, cucumbers, green onions & an assortment of italian cookies for dessert. my father always had his cookies w/ wine. i’m thinking that not only every province, city, area had it’s fish custom, but perhaps each family had it’s unique custom. too. it doesn’t make us any less italian to have differing customs.
buon natale a tutti i miei sorelle e fratelli.
amore…♥ marianna un abbraccio.speciale a michele san filippo ♥♥♥
Kyle Phillips, the About.com Guide to Italian Food, has two interesting articles about Christmas Eve dinner traditions in Italy:
In La Vigilia Napoletana he states that: “…a fish-based Christmas Eve dinner is not part of the Tuscan tradition—it’s more of a southern thing, celebrated from Rome on down…[and there is no specific number of dishes to be served]”
In Italy, not everyone has a seven fishes dinner on Christmas Eve: “…the number of courses and the kinds of fish served depend upon the number of diners and the depth of their pockets. There are no hard-and-fast rules.”
The Marco Polo Story and Pasta has been used in fact ,over used by anglo-saxons and other europeans for a long time as a put down to Italians but a look in the Etruscan tombs one will see in frescos slaves making pasta and examples of pastry wheels and cheese graters!
Isn’t it about time that this is publicized a bit rather than the put down?
are we sure that the story of marco polo bringing pasta back from the orient was/is a put-down to the italians? it’s possible that it was just lack of information on the part of the historians. but, in any case, the italians have brought pasta up to an art form & a gastronomical jewel. usually, in asian cuisine, pasta [noodles] is just a “bed” for their wonderful meat/vegetable concoctions…whereas the italians create dishes in which the PASTA is the star! buon natale a tutti….♥ marianna