Which Fish for Christmas?
They aren’t the obvious four
A few years ago, I sat down with the author and ecologist Carl Safina to discuss which fish we should be eating at Christmas time. I am an Italo-phile when it comes to cooking and I’ve long been intrigued by the Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. Carl is a bona fide Italian-American who finds the tradition of overdoing it at holiday times more than a tad distressing. So, we put our heads together and came up with this op ed that ran in The New York Times. With “The Feast” getting renewed attention via the hit TV show The Bear’s Christmas episode “Fishes”, I repurpose our essay here to see if it can be of any help to our readers.
LONG ago the Roman Catholic Church decreed Christmas Eve a vigil during which the faithful should solemnly await Christ’s arrival and his deliverance of a better world.
It took Romans and the rest of the Italian world about two seconds to blow past the abstinent part and retranslate La Vigilia di Natale as “Here ya go; knock yourselves out.” And lo, the most gut-busting piscatorial feeding frenzy ever known was born: the Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes, in which seven seafood dishes come together to form a repast of oceanic proportions.
If you are fish guys like us, this presents a conundrum. We both love seafood, particularly the Italian…
