Tasty Tips from Tina - December 2008
December 19, 2008
The holidays are upon us. How do I know that? My neighbor and I made our yearly trip to Delallo’s Italian Marketplace in my hometown of Jeannette, PA. Delallo’s is to Italian food what FAO Schwartz is to toys. The first thing that grabs you when you walk in is the aroma. There is nothing that can trigger a memory more vividly than a smell. Once you wipe the tear from your eye you get past the registers and gaze upon yard after yard of every Italian cheese and meat imaginable. The place is organized chaos. There are at least a 15 people behind the counter slicing, chopping and sampling while chatting with the customers, answering all of their questions about the huge variety they have. If you can tear yourself away from the meat and cheese counter, past the 25 different homemade breads, some of them the size of a small watermelons, you run into the bakery. It’s not your American bakery with chocolate chip and sugar cookies.
This bakery has real Italians making real biscotti, pizzelles and tiramisu. As fabulous as all this is, I was on a mission. I was there for a special fish called baccala. Baccala is a dried cod fish that starts out as hard as a table top and after 3 to 5 days of soaking in cold water reconstitutes to a beautiful white filet. This is the corner stone of my Italian Christmas Eve feast or as Grandma called it, la vigilia [the vigil]. The Italians celebrate this feast with seven fishes. The significance of the number seven has said to be the number of days for Creation, the number of days in the week or the number of Catholic Sacraments. Growing up, the extended family got together at Grandma and Pap’s house. We had baccala of course, smelts which are tiny little fish, anchovies with linguine, fried calamari, another cod fish, clams and tuna. There was a ton of food which was a good thing because there was a ton of people. The house was small and the volume was loud. Sometimes stereotypes have a hint of truth to them. We could have been a scene off of the Sopranos. But what I wouldn’t give to walk into that kitchen and see my mom and Grandmother arguing over how much salt goes into the batter. The years have passed and so have many of the people who gave me a sense of tradition and heritage. I still honor la vigilia on Christmas Eve. For me it’s a bittersweet day. I get melancholy for the people who have passed through my life that I dearly miss but it’s also a day I treasure. My family looks forward to that night. They look forward to the “special food” they only get once a year. More importantly they enjoy the bonding and laughter that is shared with stories of past Christmases. I hope one day they too will celebrate la vigilia with their families and create their own memories.
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