Cari amici,
As the year comes to a close, we hope you're enjoying this holiday season with friends and family and savoring some special dishes! We remember fondly some of our family traditions - making ravioli, seafood pasta and panzerotti (chestnuts pastries)! We are especially thankful for the friendships we've made through our culinary tours. The connections we've made in sharing cooking, wines and the culture of Italy are treasured by us both! Grazie mille! May your new year be filled with joy, peace and love. Buon Appetito and Buon Natale a tutti!Gina and Mary
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Feast of the Seven Fishes
The Italian Christmas Eve celebration of the Feast of the Seven Fishes is considered ubiquitous to all Italian Christmas festivities, but in fact in Italy you will only find it in coastal communities such as Naples, Palermo or Genoa. The custom arose from the Catholic church's restrictions on eating meat during Advent, and with the abundance of fisherman and fish, the last day of Advent being Christmas Eve, the tradition took hold of eating an elaborate fish dinner before meat returned to the table on Christmas Day.
Since a great majority of immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries came from Naples and other seaside villages in southern Italy and Palermo, the feast of the seven fishes entered the Italian American vernacular as the accepted way to celebrate the holiday in Italian style. In my family, where my grandparents came from mountainous areas of southern regions (Potenza in Basilicata and Avellino in Campania), we celebrated with cheese ravioli and in later years a huge seafood pasta dish. Since my grandparents passed however, my family has always celebrated with a huge platter of spaghettini tossed with seafood: rock shrimp, lobster or shrimp, roasted in garlic and herbs - all accompanied by copious amounts of wine!
This year in my new osteria in Louisville, we will be celebrating the Feast of the Seven Fishes in the days leading up to and following Christmas. Scallop shells filled with seafood, bread crumbs and herbs and baked, drizzled with great Sicilian olive oil; mussels steamed in white wine and tomato, served on toasted bruschetta doused in the new Tuscan olive oil; baked snapper or branzino, drizzled with lemon and orange olive oil from Sorrento - heart-healthy all around!
Here's my recipe for Zuppa di Cozze: Enjoy!
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Zuppa di Cozze, Tuscan mussel soup
2- 2 lb bags of fresh mussels
� cup olive oil
4 garlic cloves, crushed and cleaned
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 cup white wine
2 cups tomatoes, chopped
Sea salt
Bread for bruschetta
Heat the olive oil and garlic in a pot big enough to accommodate all the mussels, add half the parsley and the tomatoes and a pinch of sea salt and saut� on high heat briefly. Add the white wine and simmer for a few minutes; you want some of the wine to cook off. Add all the mussels and put the lid on the pot, stirring occasionally to bring the open mussels up to the top. It's done when all the mussels are open, they give off lots of liquid so you'll have a nice soup base.
Toast the bread (Trader Joe's has a great Tuscan Pane loaf already sliced!), very lightly drag a whole garlic clove once over each slice and drizzle with great Tuscan olive oil. Place a slice of bruschetta in each bowl and top with mussels and juice. Serve extra bruschetta or garlic toast on the side. Enjoy!
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