Buon Appetito!

In the panoply of better-known Italian-American holiday traditions—if any of them are truly known beyond the nearly 16 million of us in the United States whose family roots go back to Italy—the Feast of the Seven Fishes looms largest. Based on a Sicilian tradition called la vigilia, this Christmas Eve meal is a multi­course pescatory extravaganza of salt cod, clams, lobster branzino, calamari—whatever is considered local and festive, as there’s no official menu and it varies by family. Until I moved to Boston’s North End in my 20s and learned more about southern Italian food, I had never heard of it.

I grew up with three Italian grandparents and a Lithuanian grandmother named Mary, and as we understood our lineage, we were Italians with one blond grandma who sometimes cooked with a lot of bacon and cabbage. Our holiday food traditions traced a meandering line from my great-grandparents’ birthplaces in Piemonte and Emiglia-Romana through mid-century America to the mill town of Windsor Locks, Connecticut. We’d gather around the kitchen table in my mother’s childhood home and eat a meal of manicotti with Bolognese sauce, stuffed turkey, coleslaw with dill (the one quasi-Baltic note in the meal), Jell-O mold, sweet potatoes, and Mom’s Charlotte Russe for dessert.

My father’s side of the family was all Italian, and the meals looked more recognizably Piemontese, with lots of polenta and agnolotti. But I loved the varied tastes and textures of Grandma Mary’s Christmas Eve. The menu told a story about where we’d been and where we were for the 20-odd years we celebrated this way. So I’ve re-created our meal with some adaptations, streamlining the sauce for the manicotti, giving the Charlotte Russe an Italian twist, and adding roasted Brussels sprouts with dates, walnuts, and lemon. As for the turkey, which Grandma insisted on but Mom thought was overkill, I’ve modified our tradition to include my favorite dry-cured rib roast recipe.

Get the Recipes:

Mom’s Green Onion Dip

Homemade Manicotti

Brussels Sprouts with Dates, Walnuts, and Lemon

Tiramisu Charlotte

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