Thursday,
December 21, 2006
The
The
ANNOTICO Report
I
look forward every year to the continuing, ongoing, never ending debate over "The Feast of the Fishes".
How
Many?? Is it Seven, or Eight, or Nine,
Thirteen, or Twenty two???????
What
is the significance of the Number???
Which
Fish are to be included?????
ITALIANS DISH SEVEN WONDERS
The
By Cynthia Kilian
December 20, 2006
WHICH
dishes are best of the Feast of the Seven Fishes? Go fish. The traditional
Italian Christmas Eve dinner, created as a meatless way to prepare for the
Christmas feast, is all about seafood. But the kinds and even the number are
subject to interpretation.
"There are
no seven specific fishes. I generally make more than seven," says Michael Capasso. The general director of the Dicapo
Opera Theatre has been cooking the multicourse
extravaganza in his
But he's not
exactly serving the dishes of his youth.
"One of the
fish I grew up with was called stocco, which was this
horrendous, big, smelly fish. I replaced that recipe with cod steaks. They
taste a lot better, and people are much happier."
"My entire
childhood I just remember eels swimming around in the sink. It's pretty
hysterical," he says.
Capasso does serve eel, however,
when he can get it.
Bacala, or salt cod, is also a
traditional course. In
The significance
of seven is a little hazy, too. Most say it stands for the seven sacraments,
some for the seven days it took Joseph and Mary to get to
Others plan the
meal around totally different numbers, such as 13, for Jesus and the apostles.
"But,
uniformly, you find that everybody has their own version of it, and nobody ever
lands on seven: it's eight, it's nine, it's 22," Capasso says. "You know, typical of an Italian
kitchen, it's completely disorganized but fabulous."
We asked Capasso and six local chefs serving the feast at their
restaurants to name their favorite dishes from their dinners, for the ultimate
Feast of the Seven Fishes.
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/
print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/
The
ANNOTICO Reports
Can
be Viewed, and are Archived at:
Italia
Italia Mia: http://www.ItaliaMia.com
Annotico
Email: annotico@earthlink.net