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# 80 JUNE 20 , 2016
# 80 june 20 , 2016
cold, with different salami. lots of chili peppers, with
shrimps cooked in it.
Then there’s Fettuccine
Alfredo (5): it’s pasta with Of course all Americans
a cream sauce with butter favourite is Spaghetti and
and cheese. And shrimp Meatballs. That was also
scampi, which are large our family favourite, it was
shrimps salted with butter, called “Sunday gravy”, begarlic, olive oil, erbs and cause we used to cook it
chili peppers. We have all day, and then eat it toMarinara Sauce, a simple gether with meatballs, betomato based red sau- ans and Italian sausages.
ce. We have Garlic Bread
(6); we have Shrimps Frà We in Italy eat fish on the
Diavolo (7), that’s a very night before Christmas,
spicy tomato sauce with and this is where the Feast
of the Seven Fishes comes
from. But we never heard
about seven different fishes for that night, that’s
why this is a typical Italian
American tradition. Which
are the seven fishes, and
(5)
(6)
(7)
The Feast of the Seven Fishes
how are they cooked?
The way the Italian Americans do it has seven different small seafood dishes
… they don’t have to be
fish, the important is that
it’s something from the
sea. Some families do seven for the seven sacraments. Some do ten for
the stations of the cross.
And some families do thirteen for the twelve apostles and Jesus. So there’s
not one single standard
recipe.
There is Baccalà, salt cod
salad or salt cod with tomatoes; pasta with sardines or anchovies; clams
on a hot shelf with ore-
gano and bread crumbs.
Sometimes they can have
shrimp scampi, or lobster
Frà Diavolo or stuffed calamari marinara, which are
stuffed with seafood and
cooked in marinara sauce.
But these are just some
of the fishes that you can
find, it is different from family to family.
Perhaps the most famous
Italian American pizza is
Pepperoni Pizza: but the
term “pepperoni” doesn’t
exist in Italian. We have
“peperoni”, but that’s plural of “peperone”, the Italian word for bell pepper.
We the Italians who come
visit the US are always very
confused about this …
Maybe Americans too get
confused when they go
to Italy and they order a
peppe