Taste: My Life through Food(22)

I make it all sound simple, but inevitably there was lots of swearing and cursing about mooring lines tied improperly, weight being distributed unevenly, how many trips it would take to get us all ashore, who would go first, and the designated rower’s insufferable inability to row in a straight line. However, once we were on the island, tensions were eased by the sound of tabs being hastily pulled on cans of cold beer. Brad and the kids and I would gather stones and pile them in a circle that would contain the fire while Kate and her mom laid out the hors d’oeuvres. With the logs Brad had brought and some dried pine branches scavenged from the island, we lit a fire, balanced the old fridge grate on the stones above the flames, and waited for it to begin to burn evenly. After a few minutes we filled the aluminum pot with seawater and placed it on the grate over the now-roaring blaze. When the water came to a rolling boil, the lobsters were gently dropped in and covered with seaweed. The sweet corn, just shucked by the kids, was placed on top of the seaweed and then covered with more seaweed. Butter was melted in a little pot placed next to the fire while we ate cheese and crackers and waited impatiently for our Maine course. (Pun intended and achieved.)

How Brad knew when the lobsters were ready is beyond me, because he never timed them. It seemed he just knew. And he was never wrong. The meat we pried from the shells was always cooked to perfection. We dipped it greedily into the melted butter and lathered cold butter on the hot corn, followed by a sprinkle of salt.

Salt and butter.

Butter and salt.

Those two condiments elevated the flavors of an ancient plant and a prehistoric aquatic decapod to create a staggeringly delicious experience for us all. As I said, this was the only meal Brad ever cooked besides a burger or a steak on the barbecue, but we were all glad that he had directed his energies into perfecting it, because it was extraordinary.

If and when fresh seaweed was at hand, Kate and I always cooked lobster using Brad’s fail-safe method, and I pride myself on doing so successfully to this day. However, I’m still not even close to achieving Kate’s repeated triumphs with lasagna alla Bolognese, but I’m working on it. No doubt Felicity will do so before I’ve even left the gate.





7


Christmas Eve


Each year, as the days grow shorter in England, where I now make my home, I cannot help but miss the winters of my childhood, appallingly more than a half a century ago, in upper Westchester, New York. Our home on a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill was surrounded by trees, which by early December were almost always laden with snow. The ponds and lakes would begin to freeze over, and the woods around us became studies in hard black and soft white, making them wonderfully mysterious and therefore more inviting than ever. I loved everything about winter, and I loved Christmas in particular. Our Christmases were joyous celebrations that to this day I still attempt to re-create.

Although my parents’ funds were limited, they made sure that our house was always elegantly decorated. My father had constructed a modernist manger out of scraps of walnut wood, in which sat contemporary figures of Mary, Joseph, and the Christ child. Over the years, other, more traditional store-bought versions of shepherds, wise men, and farm animals somehow made their way into our Gropius-inspired stable, but they always seemed to me to be unsophisticated interlopers. Each year, when this homemade “presepio” (Italian for “creche”), the Christmas tree lights (the large, primary-colored, hand-painted variety), the stockings, and other decorative holiday bric-a-brac were freed from their crumbling cardboard boxes, I felt an almost overwhelming surge of joy. I knew that Christmas would transport us out of the prescribed, the mundane, and into a week or so of undefined days filled with endless play.

As an Italian Catholic family, though very un-practicing, we ate only fish on Christmas Eve. Homemade food from recipes passed down over many generations was our daily fare, but during Christmas this practice was elevated to even greater traditional culinary heights. It’s believed that the serving of fish on Christmas Eve comes from the Roman tradition of not eating meat the night before a feast day. In some families this meal is called the Feast of the Seven Fishes, but no one is quite sure why there are seven, other than it is the most used number in the Bible. At any rate, at least seven types of fish were served in my home on Christmas Eve when I was a kid. My mother would prepare a meal similar to the one that follows:

Appetizers

Shrimp cocktail

Baked clams

Seafood ceviche

Stuffed mushrooms

Zeppole



First course

Salt cod with potatoes, green olives, and tomato

Pasta with tuna sauce



Second course

Baked salmon or baked bluefish with breadcrumbs

Roasted potatoes

Green beans

Broccoli di rapa

Green salad



Dessert

Ice cream

Biscotti

Apple pie

Panettone

Nuts and dried figs





The above is not an exaggeration. It was also for only five people: my parents, my two sisters, and myself. Over the years, with the inevitable addition of spouses, children, friends, etc., the number of dishes stayed the same but the amount of food increased.

Allow me to focus on one dish from each course, beginning with zeppole. Zeppole, or “zeepoli,” as they are often pronounced by Italian Americans, are deep-fried, loosely shaped rings or balls of dough made from mashed-up potatoes and wheat flour. (They can also be made with only wheat flour.) When fried in very hot olive oil they instantly puff up and become addictively delicious. Whenever my mother would begin to fry them, the whole family would unconsciously start edging more and more closely to the stove until we were all huddled around her, practically panting with a hunger we didn’t know we had until she started cooking. After the zeppole have fully puffed and are golden brown, they are plucked out and set aside to cool. As soon as they have cooled enough to handle, they are then devoured by anyone who can grab one the quickest. Because my father had very callused hands from years of sculpting and working with solvents, he was able to snatch the hottest and freshest of the batch. As children we tried to do the same, but it was of no use. Our soft palms and delicate fingertips couldn’t handle the heat of those golden, doughy parcels, and we were therefore forced to wait for them to cool as we watched my father try to practically swallow his whole. We did however take great comfort in the fact that he would inevitably burn his tongue or his mouth in his eagerness and greed.