THE MAFIA AND THE ARTIST
“Fish for Christmas?”
“It’s an Italian-Catholic thing. We call it The Feast of the Seven Fishes. Not all Italians do it, but it’s been a tradition with my family in Brooklyn since before I was born. We have seven different seafood dishes: calamari, scungilli—which is a conch delicacy—baccala, shrimp, clams with pasta, often lobster with pasta and a red sauce, and then something like salmon or trout. And of course we’ve got other stuff that has no seafood in it like spaghetti without the meat and antipasto.”
“What’s antipasto?”