An Italian-American Carroll Gardens Christmas Eve

You can take the family out of Brooklyn, but you can’t take Brooklyn out of the family. Christmas Eve dinner is the biggest and most traditional meal of the year for my family. A lot of what we eat is purchased and prepared in the old neighborhood, our beloved Carroll Gardens.

Alas, this year our Carroll Gardens Christmas Eve will be taking place at the home of my sister in Manalapan, New Jersey (she has the largest dining room). In addition to us Brooklynites, there will be relatives coming from The Bronx, Staten Island, Westchester, and as far away as Arizona.

Nonetheless, it will be a Carroll Gardens celebration through and through! You see we transport just about everything including the aprons from Marietta’s which my mom and aunt wear while cooking. In fact, the gifts must be sent the week before because there is absolutely no room in the car after my very patient husband has loaded all the food.

Some of you may be wondering what is different about an Italian-American Christmas Eve. Well, the #1 difference is that we eat only seafood on Christmas Eve. No meat. If you don’t like fish, you can fill up on bread from Caputo Bakery and antipasto of fresh mozzarella, basket cheese, provolone, olives, artichoke hearts, hot cherry peppers, and pickled mushrooms from Caputo Fine Foods and Esposito and Sons, but you won’t be getting any meat during the main meal. The only exceptions to the no meat rule are some hot and sweet sopressata and the salami in the lard bread.

In Southern Italy, Christmas Eve is often referred to as the Feast of the Seven Fishes, also known as La Vigilia. Our family has more than seven but we often lose count as to exactly how many. We start off with a huge vat of seafood salad, prepared over the course of several days by my mom and aunt. This salad is labor of love consisting of octopus, shrimp, lobster, scungilli, calamari, celery, garlic, parsley, lemon and olive oil. Next are baked clams and baked mussels which are followed by linguini with white clam sauce. Then we have the fritto misto of shrimp, calamari, smelts, flounder, baccala (prepared two ways) and scallops, usually served with escarole or broccoli. This is followed with broiled lobster tails and shrimp oreganata. By this time, we are ready to explode so we wait awhile before bringing out dessert. The whole time we are eating, Jimmy Roselli, Lou Monte and Christmas standards are playing in the background.

I remember the fish frying when I was a kid; my mom would be in the kitchen with the window wide open, no matter how freezing cold it was outside. Most of our neighbors back then were also Italian so you would see lots of brightly lit kitchen windows open across the backyards. Nowadays, my brothers-in-law do much of the frying in the garage so the whole house doesn’t smell of fried fish.

A lot of the sweets are also brought from Brooklyn. My mom and aunt make the most delectable struffoli, crunchy fried balls of dough glazed with honey and topped with confettini candies. My sisters both make a variety of cookies. Last year, my brother made beautiful linzer tarts, reminiscent of the dearly departed College Bakery. We also have Italian Christmas cookies that my mom buys for each of us from Court Pastry. These include molasses cookies covered in chocolate, ginger S-cookies studded with slivered almonds and my favorite, the cuccidati, filled with figs, raisins and nuts! Also on the table are torrone nougat candies imported from Italy, homemade almond croccante, chestnuts, figs, clementines, finocchio (fennel) to help with the digestion, probably a pie, and a cake for my brother-in-law and youngest nephew who share the same December birthday. We wash it all down with American coffee, espresso and Sambuca.

When we were kids, it was all about the presents but now that my siblings and I are adults, it is really all about the food -- and the family that prepares it and shares it. Last year, my Uncle Louis summed it up best when he said, after biting into a delicious, crispy, salty, perfectly fried baccala fritter, “other than Baby Jesus being born, this is what Christmas is to me!” I know my grandparents and great-grandparents who brought these traditions from Sicily, Sorrento and Ischia would be pleased that we have continued them. I hope the next generation will do the same. Whether we are in Carroll Gardens or New Jersey, the only things that matter are that we are all together and we hold onto these much loved, time-honored ways.

One thing we can’t bring to Manalapan is Midnight Mass at Sacred Hearts/St. Stephen’s so we locals will be going to Mass on Christmas Day instead.

Buon Natale from my family to yours!