How to Make a Seven Fish Feast in Three Easy Lessons

Or How I Learned to Prepare La Vigilia…, My Way

 As lore goes, the Feast of the Seven Fishes – commonly referred to as La Vigilia – began centuries ago in southern Italy and today has grown into a custom celebrated by Italians throughout the world.  Now my parents were Sicilian and so if that isn’t southern Italian I don’t know what is, and eating fish, Catholic or not (of course we were), was standard operating procedure.  For me it didn’t matter, I liked fish, but apparently (one learns this as they grow up) others are not so accepting or, heaven forbid, they don’t cook it the same way and this can lead to trouble or at least the age old question; how do you like your baccala?

Many people have either a limited cooking ability or a narrow list of seafood favorites and you will find those with Seven Fish Feast that includes lobster…, and nothing else.  Of course lobster isn’t a fish, but that isn’t the real issue here anyway.  This issue is really; how many fish can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck fish.  In other words, the art of home maintenance, (read: kitchen acumen) is dying.  Very few these days can do more than take the package out of the freezer and throw it into the microwave.  Lucky for my wife, I am not one of those.  I like to cook, and since at one point in time I was a scientist too, I liked to experiment while I cooked. 

Like most scientific efforts, the experiments are used to write papers, whether they worked or not, and so when it came to a major holiday event, like La Vigilia, well sometimes pragmatic husband overrode mad scientist and so I opted to get help in preparing the wonderful meal that was to include seven.

First there was baccala.  Not much help really needed here; after all it is just salted cod, right?  And everyone knows what to do with salted cod.  I mean heck, there are millions of ways one can prepare salted cod, each as easy as the last style you tried once before, and wrote a paper on the results.   You can put it in a stew or soup, a salad or heck; you can even toss it in a casserole or two.  Most people will soak the dried fish in water for a few days to lose the sea salt, so again, this is easy, you just take out a big pan, fill it with water, through in the salted beast and start soaking.  I usually start this process on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Then there are those ‘others’, the ones who like it salted, or dry as a bone, we won’t talk about them here. 

Of course there is a dish that I do not think I will ever again see done as well as my mother’s version and that is ‘Pasta con le Sarde’.  Forgive me a moment of fond reflection.  I’m back, and I have to say that was a wonderful dish full of fresh sardines and.., PASTA.  In fact I liked it so much I use it in chapter XXXI (Sardines, Anchovies or Cannolies) in my book By Any Means.  I will not even attempt this dish for it is too hard to cook memories.

Now, even without the sardines the list of fish resources to use in one feast is enormous and that is where help is needed, I mean what if you select, calamari, scungulli, clams, muscles, octopus, eel, shrimp, oh did I mention gefilte fish and lox (we are a mixed marriage after all), and you haven’t even gotten to the main course yet.  How can one prepare all of these treats in a manner that will bring out the best of each and, while multitasking, still have time to press the grapes and ferment the extract for brandy (I’ll get to that in another blog).  For me, this is where I sought help and in so doing I learned how to prepare Sushi, from an expert.

Now, he said he was an expert, and not being trained in the art, and living out in the wilds of New Jersey, how was I to know.  He did work in the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thia, Brazilian fast food diner near where I live.  He also renders dead animals for the county in his spare time.  “The trick,” he said, “is to know your Wasabi.” 

I wasn’t really sure which religious denomination Wasabi falls into, I have enough trouble keeping all the holidays my wife and I have melded together in any semblance of order, but not wishing to offend the cook I just nodded my head in the affirmative and the lesson continued.  He then showed me how to cut sirloin and quarter-loins from the stock.  Now, I don’t really know much about fish, but this one must have been flown in from the pacific because it had four legs and a tail, but once we got the flow going the stuff was cut up in a hurry and thrown in the pot.  A few hours later we had baccala stew, or so he told me and this brings us back to the start…, there are millions of ways people will cook baccala to get you to eat it.  Try some, you’ll like it.

With a smile I return to my favorite quote:

“Don’t worry,” says Jim Gaffigan, “there is a bunny.”

Saverio Monachino's writing style has been termed by some as 'Kurt Vonnegut meets Mark Twain'.  Saverio describes it as 'comic fiction noir'. Regardless of the terms used, he is  attempting is to use humor to open the door to serious discussion.  You can find Saverio Monachino on www.comicfictionnoir.com.