Mike's family is Italian and has celebrated Christmas Eve with the traditional Southern Italian dinner of the Seven Fishes since the dawn of civilization. It's a family event attended by members of the family ranging in age from 4 to 90, and depending on who is in town, we often have more than 25 people sitting down to dinner together. This holiday event moved to our house three years ago, after being hosted my Mike's Grandmother, Tweetie, for the last 65 years. Around 2:00, people start converging on my kitchen, and a flurry of activity begins. Bread is baked, fish is cleaned and the smell of garlic roasted in olive oil fills the house.
Something, however, is missing. Each year, in the midst of the fishy commotion, somebody begins to wax poetic about the baked eel that used to be part of the dinner routine. When Mike was young, eel was always part of the dinner, but rising prices and limited availability have made the eel something of an urban legend. Every year Tweetie tells us how Poppy would bring home the whole sacrificial eel, nail it to the wall and skin the poor thing. This remembrance is followed by Mike vowing that THIS IS THE YEAR that we will again have eel for the Christmas Eve feast. He will find one, he will, HE WILL!!!
I have to admit to being not a lover of fish. At the first Christmas Eve fish dinner I attended, nearly twenty years ago, I was so afraid of the scaly guys that I brought my own dinner, Chicken Nuggets from KFC. As the years have passed, I have come to enjoy and appreciate all of the family traditions that the fish dinner embraces. I even participate, making bread, appetizers and dessert. But every year, as the eel again raises it's slimy head, I begin to worry. What if this IS the year Mike finds an eel?
Several weeks ago, I was telling my friend about the Christmas Eve fish dinner. He is a hunter, fisher and true gourmet, and as I got to the drama of the eel, I saw a dreamy, faraway look come over him. I'm not sure, but he might of actually drooled. The draw of the eel was that strong. He started making plans, calling eel resources and volunteering his own garage and tools to skin and process the legendary eel, in trade for several choice pieces, of course.
I have, in years past, half-heartedly participated in the annual eel search. A couple of years ago, I made some phone calls on December 23 to see if Whole Foods had an extra eel laying around. No such luck. But this year, feeling more pressure, I decided to try a little harder. I actually went to see the fish monger at Whole Foods to see about ordering an eel.
The fish department at Whole Foods is beautifully laid out, with many colorful varieties of aquatic life. Trout, shrimp, mussels, tuna steaks, lines of pink crabs resting on ice and a whole red octopus waited behind the glass with one small grilled piece of eel. Maybe this WAS going to be the year of the eel. I waited nervously for my turn to speak to the fish manager. As I asked about ordering a raw eel, he began to shake his head sadly. He made a few phone calls but an eel was not to be found. He did suggest that I try an Asian fish market where these "unusual requests" can often be found. The legend of the elusive eel lives on.
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