It is that time of year to start planning and preparing for all of the traditional Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Christmastide family traditions -- including all of those wonderful family meals.  I hope that this article will spark some goood and friendly discussion about family traditions from all those who post on this site.

Sweet and savory: SCCC’s Chef Rocco Verrigni builds on family Christmas Eve traditions
By Siobhan Connally December 16, 2015
If you ask Chef Rocco Verrigni, a professor of culinary arts at Schenectady County Community College, to talk about holiday meals, you’ll find his tastes are firmly rooted in childhood.

“I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a multi-generational Italian home where food was important, but also in a household with a grandmother,” said Verrigni, who noted cooking with his mother and grandmother informed his professional life. “Food was always in my future, I suppose,” he added, explaining his father was a butcher and owned a grocery store in Schenectady where the family lived.

“I have two very distinct memories of foods with contrasting characteristics: one savory and one sweet,” said Verrigni. “The most vivid one to this day was the strong, pungent smell of baccala, the very traditional Christmas Eve meal of salt cod fish, cooked in tomato sauce. The smell of the dried cod fish soaking in water actually started three or four days before Christmas Eve. It wouldn’t be until many years later that I would come to appreciate this traditional food. And yet I’ve never fully became a fan of it. I guess early childhood impressions die hard.”

The other memory is wrapped up with his grandmother and dusted in “Christmas snow.”

“There’s a traditional holiday sweet Gran called ‘wands,’ that we made together. It’s really known as ‘Guanti,’ which translates to ‘gloves,’ and it is a sweet, buttery cookie that looks like two hands clasped together.”

The process was laborious. The dough had to be shaped and folded, pan fried in an iron skillet and cooled slightly before they were ready to eat. But it was a labor of love.

“It was all laid on brown paper bags to soak up the oil and we’d coat them in confectioners sugar,” said Verrigni. “I loved that I got to be with my grandmother, listen to her stories and get covered head to toe in white powder and it would all be OK.”

Verrigni says that Christmas Eve dinner in Italy was historically meatless and consisted of a light seafood meal before midnight Mass. This is based on the Roman Catholic tradition of abstinence on important holy days.

Unlike the Italian-American “Festa dei sette pesci,” or Feast of the Seven Fishes, in southern Italy a much simpler meal of one or two fish dishes is usually served, often the common and abundant salt cod known as “baccala.”

“They call his Cucina de povera, ‘the cuisine of the poor’ and it was not a meal of abundance. A more robust and plentiful meal was reserved for Christmas Day lunch,” he said.

It’s this tradition of simplicity and sustainability that feeds him these days.

“Personally, traditions are wonderful, but I feel that we should also create our own traditions. Cooking for those who are going to be there … cooking for the love and not just the show of it, that’s important, too. It’s important to make food that you can sit and enjoy yourself.

“I think shared, home-cooked meals are becoming more important even as our lives become more frenetic,” he said, noting that even so, some traditions could use a little modernization.

“Remember, grandmother never sat down,” he says with a chuckle.


“Although I can’t swear that this recipe was served on Christmas Eve in our house, I remember very clearly seeing this dish appear whenever a meatless dinner was required, be it during Lent or on meatless Fridays. And therefore could be a part of a meatless Christmas Eve dinner that graces our table over and over again,” Verrigni said.

Ingredients

•4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

•6 large eggs, beaten

•1 pound bucatini or percatelli, broken in half *

•2 cups freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (6 ounces) **

•1 cup milk or cream

•1/3 cup chopped parsley

•1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

•1 tablespoon minced garlic

•1 tablespoon freshly ground pepper

•2 teaspoons kosher salt

•Warm marinara sauce, for serving

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease a 10-inch cast-iron skillet.

In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook the bucatini until al dente. Drain and run under cold water to stop the cooking. Drain well.

In a large bowl, whisk together the butter, eggs, cheese, milk, parsley, olive oil, garlic, pepper and salt. Add the pasta and toss to coat thoroughly. Pour into the prepared skillet and bake for about 30 minutes, until just set. Remove from the oven.

Preheat the broiler. Broil the bucatini pie 6 inches from the heat until golden, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let cool for 10 minutes before cutting into wedges. Serve with warm marinara sauce.

Alternately, you can use leftover cooked pasta, and cook fully in skillet before browning in oven.

*Can substitute any long, thick pasta. For a more rustic flavor, use whole wheat pasta

**substitute a combination of Parmegiano and Pecorino and/provolone keeping the total to 6 oz

For a non-meatless version add 1-2 oz. of sautéed pancetta to egg mixture.

Christmas Brussels Sprouts ala Rocco

Serves 4

This recipe celebrates the Christmas holiday colors of red and green as well as being representative of the Italian green, white, and red national flag.


PROVIDED PHOTO

Christmas Brussels Sprouts ala Rocco.

Ingredients

•1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts, trimmed, sliced thinly

•2 tablespoons olive oil

•2 ounces pancetta, finely diced

•2 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced

•1/2 teaspoon red crushed pepper flakes

•4 tablespoons fresh bread crumbs, finely crumbled (see note)

•2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

•Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

•3 oz. roasted red peppers, sliced into 1/4-inch strips (see note)

Trim outer leaves of Brussels sprouts, cut off the stem end. Slice into thin slices.

Heat oil in skillet, add pancetta, and cook until pancetta begins to crisp.

Add garlic and pepper flakes. Cook just until garlic softens and is lightly browned.

Push everything to the edges of the skillet, add breadcrumbs and cheese and brown golden color. Stir to mix everything back together.

Add the sprouts to the skillet and cook until fully tender and heated through.

Turn off heat, add roasted red peppers, and toss with Brussels sprouts.

Season with salt and black pepper.

Note To make bread crumbs, cut 1-inch cubes of day-old bread, and process in food processor until finely ground.

If possible use roasted red peppers that you have roasted and preserved.

Sprinkle with the pecans and toasted coconut.

The Bucatini Pie recipe reminds me of my grandmother's baked macaroni and cheese - she always put eggs in it - so as a result it was more like a macaroni and cheese custard.  
It was the one dish that she made for every extended family gathering regardless of what time of year.  She always knew that the even the most finicky of her children and grandchildren and guest would at least eat the macaroni and cheese.

One of our favorite family traditions is strapping extremist liberals to super candles and firing them off at midnight on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Robert Reich should come live on my street where the pastime is sitting on the front porch...  Playing loud music...  Getting in pretty loud verbal confrontations...

Oh and of course, walking in the streets.

Robert Reich is a (very well meaning) buffoon who ignores the practical realities of the consumption and entitlement generation.  Oh and when I say entitlement I don't just mean those who live (and sometimes really do NEED) public assistance...  But also college graduate millennials that often lack the work ethic of someone who graduated even just 10-12 years ago.