Happy Christmas Eve! For the penultimate instalment of 12 Days of an Adventures with Sarah Christmas, we’re turning to Italy, where this day is just as big – if not bigger! – than Christmas Day.
Known as Vigilia di Natale in Italian, today is very much the start of the celebrations. Businesses, restaurants and stores close early in anticipation of a large, long family dinner. Midnight Mass services are popular, and it is on this night that the figure of baby Jesus is added to nativity scenes in homes and churches. Kids also often get presents after dinner, rather than on Christmas morning.
The Christmas Eve dinner is a big deal. Just as elaborate and large as Christmas Day lunch, the focus is on fish rather than meat. This comes from the Christian tradition of fasting before important days, and although there has not been a requirement to avoid meat on Christmas Eve for decades, the tradition remains strong.
This tradition is also what inspired the Italian-American Feast of the Seven Fishes. There is no ‘Festa dei Sette Pesci’ in Italy, but when immigrants (largely from southern Italy) set up new lives in the US, they continued the habit of eating fish on Christmas Eve. This evolved into a formal seven dish meal, using the abundant food on offer in the US that was not so accessible in Italy.
The fish dishes on offer in Italy vary by region. In Venice you’ll find lots of baccalà (cod) dishes, whereas in Tuscany a hearty fish soup known as Cacciucco alla Livornese is popular. Further south in Puglia and Campania large plates of fried fish are common, and in Sicily you’ll find sardines in all sorts of dishes.
One of the most popular plates, found all over Italy, is Spaghetti alle Vongole – spaghetti with clams. If you want to include a taste of Italy in your festive menu, below is a recipe for the classic dish.
Spaghetti alle Vongole
Serves 4
Ingredients:
1kg clams
350g dry spaghetti
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, sliced
80ml of white wine
1 handful of parsley, chopped
Fresh or dried chilli pepper
Salt
Method:
Step 1 – Clean the clams, discarding any broken or empty shells. Add the clams to a large bowl and fill with cold water. Add plenty of salt ( the water should be salty enough to taste like sea water) and leave for around 2-3 hours to purge out any sand and grit inside the clams.
Step 2 – Drain the clams, then rinse carefully to remove any salt residue.
Step 3 – Bring water for the spaghetti to a boil, add plenty of salt and put the dry spaghetti in. Cook for 2 minutes less than the time on the packet for properly al-dente pasta.
Step 4 – In the meantime, heat olive oil in a large pan, add the garlic and chilli pepper to taste. Saute gently until soft and then add the clams to the pan, along with the white wine. Cover with a lid and allow the clams to open (around 2 minutes on a high heat).
Step 5 – Take the pan off the heat and discard any clams that haven’t opened. Drain the spaghetti, but save a small cup of the cooking water.
Step 6 – Add the drained spaghetti to the clams and toss to coat the pasta in the cooking sauce. Add some of the pasta cooking water as needed to finish the sauce, and season to taste.
Step 7 – Take the pan off the heat and stir the chopped parsley through the pasta. Leave for a minute for the spaghetti to absorb all the delicious flavor and then serve immediately.
We hope you enjoy your Christmas Eve, however you celebrate, and we’ll see you again tomorrow for our final instalment of our festive series with a special message from Sarah.
If you’ve missed any of the other posts, catch up on all the previous days of our 12 Days of an Adventures with Sarah Christmas here.
