For twenty years I’ve been making the squid spaghetti sauce for Christmas Eve – the Guerra family tradition. Growing up, I would wake up with Grandpa on the morning of Christmas Eve, and we would start sautéing the garlic and onion and trimming the squid. After the squid simmered for a while we poured in some wine and then the tomatoes and spices to complete the sauce. Well, that’s an abbreviating version; I don’t want to give away the secret ingredient, but if you add a little whiskey to your coffee the sauce comes out much better. Of course, I didn’t take part in that part of the cooking process until I was close to being of age. We wrapped up the cooking around lunch and then let the sauce simmer all day until the family party where anywhere between forty and fifty cousins, depending on who could come in that year, would gather. The rest of the menu included sautéed spinach, olives, fried smelts, orange slices, and more cookies than forty people could possibly eat. It was our family’s take on the Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes.
Even after I was married and couldn’t make it home each Christmas, I still made the sauce. My Texas in-laws loved it (At
least that is what they led me to believe), and it became a family tradition with them as well. This year was different though. This year Christmas was in Charlotte, and we were spending Christmas Eve at my cousin Marilyn’s house. Her house, her rules. She was making the sauce, and I was assigned the smelts.
Smelts? I enjoy eating them, but I have never made them. From what I know, they are very temperamental to get right. Some years they were perfect. Others they turned out fishy or soggy. The results always varied no matter if cousins Booboo and Karen made them or if they came from a restaurant. I was hesitant, but what the hell. I am always up for a challenge.
The afternoon before Christmas Eve, I prepared my cooking station on the balcony since my wife decided the house
should not smell like fried fish. I had an assembly line set up of the three pounds of smelts; corn starch mixed with garlic powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne; deep fryer; cooling plate; and Java cigar. I had my brother-in-law with me to help keep me in line and watch the timer.
I quickly learned that it’s not the chef that controls the fate of the smelts but the smelts themselves. Some were absolutely perfect. Others were more like potato chips with a little fish flavor. The problem was there was no consistency in the size of the smelts. Some were minnow size, and others were sardine size. None were what I was accustomed to – something closer to small fish sticks. My father affirmed that the smelts they had in Ohio had the same problem. It must have been a bad season for smelts.
Regardless, it was still good to get together with family and attempt an assembly of our traditional dinner. After all,
while it pains me to say it, during the Holidays it’s not the food that counts, but who you are with.