Daniel Paterna’s Feast of the Seven Fishes: A Brooklyn-Italian’s Recipes Celebrating Food and Family is a timely reminder that a shared memory of food draws upon and enriches our souls.
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Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: powerHouse Books
ISBN-10: 1576879151
ISBN-13: 978-1576879153
A little bit about Feast of the Seven Fishes
This is not a cookbook in the classic sense. It’s a magical journey into a hidden world of my family’s cooking traditions and of my connections to my Italian American heritage; Its an exploration of the cultural DNA that links together events, times and traditions. I’ve tried to portray the simple meals my family shared in an elevated light. Through recipes handed down in my family, self-made photographs , and three-generations of memories, I reveal the soulful, humorous, and always delicious history of Italian-Americans in Brooklyn.
Most immigrant traditions will yield to the American way of life.. I remember my grandmother preparing Italian meals while, upstairs, my mom might be preparing a 60s space age style meal out of a box. Sitting at my grandmother’s cloth-covered table, I sensed how much she relished the joy I found in her food. After dinner, she might share postcards from family and friends in Naples, and provide a heartfelt narration of the Italy she so missed.
In this 21st century, meeting around a dinner table with family or friends can seem like a burden and a scheduling nightmare. I feel challenged by these pressures in my own second generation Italian-American experience. The continuity represented by these recipes shows how important it is to sit for a meal as a family. Celebrating togetherness as a life-sustaining gift.
In short, this is a visual archive of generations who had their full share of challenges balancing work and life, the old and the new As the older generation fades away, I feel as though I’m at the delta of my family’s culinary river, catching as much as I can to keep it from drifting away.
These recipes are grounded in the everyday experience of the people that inhabited my childhood–the denizens of Bensonhurst, the children and grandchildren of a distant country that still kept its hold on them. These recipes are part of their life stories and their legacy. The first part of this book is a personal account of these people and of the stories that they told around the dinner table.
The second part of this book looks at some shopkeepers of my Bensonhurst neighborhood: bakers, fishmongers, pasta makers– the purveyors of many of the tools and ingredients required to create the meals of my childhood. In this section, I have chosen to include a recipe inspired by each of these shops.
The core of the book is dedicated to the foods my family prepared on special holidays. Each section is organized around the sequence of dishes that are traditionally served on the day. Visual memory helped me to recreate dishes as I remember them. I tried my best to locate and use many of the original plates and platters my parents and grandparents passed around our table. I close with a selection of dishes designed to turn any day into a holiday.
In summary this is my intensely personal portrayal that powerfully illustrates the essence of the American experience: the ways food, family, and memory are preserved and changed by the immigrants who brought them to our shores, and the children of those immigrants who keep the flame alive.
Feast of the Seven Fishes Press Kit
A little bit about Feast of the Seven Fishes
This is not a cookbook in the classic sense. It’s a magical journey into a hidden world of my family’s cooking traditions and of my connections to my Italian American heritage; Its an exploration of the cultural DNA that links together events, times and traditions. I’ve tried to portray the simple meals my family shared in an elevated light. Through recipes handed down in my family, self-made photographs , and three-generations of memories, I reveal the soulful, humorous, and always delicious history of Italian-Americans in Brooklyn.
Most immigrant traditions will yield to the American way of life.. I remember my grandmother preparing Italian meals while, upstairs, my mom might be preparing a 60s space age style meal out of a box. Sitting at my grandmother’s cloth-covered table, I sensed how much she relished the joy I found in her food. After dinner, she might share postcards from family and friends in Naples, and provide a heartfelt narration of the Italy she so missed.
In this 21st century, meeting around a dinner table with family or friends can seem like a burden and a scheduling nightmare. I feel challenged by these pressures in my own second generation Italian-American experience. The continuity represented by these recipes shows how important it is to sit for a meal as a family. Celebrating togetherness as a life-sustaining gift.
In short, this is a visual archive of generations who had their full share of challenges balancing work and life, the old and the new As the older generation fades away, I feel as though I’m at the delta of my family’s culinary river, catching as much as I can to keep it from drifting away.
These recipes are grounded in the everyday experience of the people that inhabited my childhood–the denizens of Bensonhurst, the children and grandchildren of a distant country that still kept its hold on them. These recipes are part of their life stories and their legacy. The first part of this book is a personal account of these people and of the stories that they told around the dinner table.
The second part of this book looks at some shopkeepers of my Bensonhurst neighborhood: bakers, fishmongers, pasta makers– the purveyors of many of the tools and ingredients required to create the meals of my childhood. In this section, I have chosen to include a recipe inspired by each of these shops.
The core of the book is dedicated to the foods my family prepared on special holidays. Each section is organized around the sequence of dishes that are traditionally served on the day. Visual memory helped me to recreate dishes as I remember them. I tried my best to locate and use many of the original plates and platters my parents and grandparents passed around our table. I close with a selection of dishes designed to turn any day into a holiday.
In summary this is my intensely personal portrayal that powerfully illustrates the essence of the American experience: the ways food, family, and memory are preserved and changed by the immigrants who brought them to our shores, and the children of those immigrants who keep the flame alive.
Feast of the Seven Fishes Press Kit
Reviews
This deeply personal book is meant to move you, to help you understand the story of one family but to see that so many other families lived their lives much like this.
-Michael Lomonaco, former Epicurious TV host and chef at Porter House New York
Daniel Paterna’s Feast of the Seven Fishes: A Brooklyn Memoir on Food and Family celebrates the rich culinary bounty Italian immigrants brought to Brooklyn. A powerful meditative reflection in photographs and interviews on the emotional connections—food, family, neighbohood—between Italy and America, Feast of the Seven Fishes illuminates the deep cultural bond between our immigrant elders and their children.
The power of our immigrant inheritance is expressed in the details Paterna summons—the importance of the neighborhood, the multi-generational visits to the salumiera, and the pescheria—and in the carefully curated family stories and recipes offered here. I identify with this unique portrayal of Paterna’s heartfelt pride of place and family, especially of his mom.
In a Brooklyn of change and gentrification, Paterna’s recipes are a timely reminder that a shared memory of food draws upon and enriches our souls.
-Actor and Director John Turturro
In this exciting photo-heavy cookbook, graphic designer Paterna celebrates the culinary heritage of the Italian-Americans of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He shares dozens of beautiful family photos and anecdotes (beneath photos of his maternal grandparents’ passports, he writes: “My grandfather promised he would bring her back to America as his bride”) that span three generations. Paterna’s mother, Anne, typed out dozens of the family’s recipes on index cards and carefully converted “pinches” and “approximate timings” into real measures.
-Publishers Weekly Feast of the Seven Fishes: A Brooklyn Italian’s Recipes Celebrating Food and Family
Veering away from the south, we land in Brooklyn, home to robust Italian-American communities since the late 19th century. Daniel Paterna, a second-generation Italian-American from Bensonhurst (still a big Italian enclave) shares not only fantastic family recipes like traditional stuffed calamari, fried peppers with salt cod, beefsteak with tomatoes, mint and zucchini salad, and marinara sauced crab, but the stories and histories of his family and fellow Italian-Americans through three generations in New York. This is as much memoir as it is cookbook, and sounds like the perfect way to pass a chilly evening (preferably with a big bowl of pasta and a big glass of wine on the side).
-Chowhound Best New Regional & Cultural Cookbooks for Fall 2019
Bensonhurst-born home cook, photographer and graphic designer Daniel Paterna is dishing up more than mouthwatering recipes in his new cookbook, “Feast of the Seven Fishes: A Brooklyn Italian’s Recipes Celebrating Food & Family.” Through lovingly rendered photographs, readers also get a taste of the neighborhood’s little Italian bakeries, butcher shops and corner stores alongside a highly personal family memoir.
The Bensonhurst backdrop gives rich context to recipes for dishes like arancini, eggplant parmesan and Paterna’s favorite, torta dolce di ricotta, a traditional Italian cheesecake made with ricotta instead of cream cheese.
-Brooklyn Daily Eagle New cookbook is a visual ode to Italian southern Brooklyn
And Paterna capture the Italian genius for making something out of nothing. Who would guess that stoccofisso, dried, salted cod or squirming eels and octopus could be transformed into dishes that you wait all year to eat. The Feast of the Seven Fishes is a symbolic meal served on Christmas Eve, said to represent the seven sacraments or the seven days of creation, but now its own ritual of family.
-Appetite for Books I like reality that tastes like bread.
A visually appealing feast of a book that beautifully incorporates recipes with family history in what becomes a unique style of biographical cookbook. The new photography gorgeously accentuates the recipes while interspersed throughout are old family photos to accompany the personalized stories. Photographs of old typed and hand-written recipe cards add a sense of delight to this novel way of presenting this time-honored annual Italian-American Christmas Eve feast. This authentically heart-warming work feels like the most modern of cookbooks combined with a worn and well-loved family recipe card box.
-Next Generation Indie Book Awards Judge
Enough with the jokes about garlic and overeating. Its time to recognize Italian home cooking, Italian-American cooking, not as coarse overabundance but for its subtle sparking of flavors, its seasonal sensibility, and its generous expression of love.
The Brooklyn author’s Feast of the Seven Fishes book features recipes, yes, but also a window into Italian-American family life without the stereotypes.
-La Cucina Italiana How Daniel Paterna Captured the Italian-American Experience
Like my Mom’s first effort to document in her beautifully annotated recipe cards, so did I follow up with a book that memorialized her diligence to our culinary culture. I felt the road less traveled Italian American story had yet been written..
-All Author Daniel Paterna Interview
But the smells are Paterna’s fondest memories. He remembers walking into his mom’s kitchen on Christmas Eve’s morning, while she was preparing the dishes to later bring over to his aunt’s. “The smell of fried peppers and her preparing the baccalà hit you like a ton of bricks,” he laughs. “The only times that she made these things were on that holiday and it’s like you waited the entire year to have that.”
-Thrillist How to Shop and Cook for Feast of the Seven Fishes
Feast of the Seven Fishes: An Evening with Daniel Paterna at the Columbus Citizens Foundation
video: Preview | Event
But the smells are Paterna’s fondest memories. He remembers walking into his mom’s kitchen on Christmas Eve’s morning, while she was preparing the dishes to later bring over to his aunt’s. “The smell of fried peppers and her preparing the baccalà hit you like a ton of bricks,” he laughs. “The only times that she made these things were on that holiday and it’s like you waited the entire year to have that.”
-Thrillist How to Shop and Cook for Feast of the Seven Fishes
On this week’s episode, host Caryn Antonini is joined by guest Daniel Paterna, author of the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a Brooklyn memoir and cookbook celebrating food, family and Italian American culture, especially timely during this Lenten Season.
podcast: Cultivated By Caryn w.guest Daniel Paterna
In the heart of Brooklyn, amidst the bustling streets and diverse communities, lies a treasure trove of culinary heritage. It’s here that Daniel Paterna, a proud Italian-American with deep roots in his ancestral homeland, has crafted a masterpiece that transcends mere recipes – it’s a celebration of family, tradition, and Daniel’s rich Italian-American culture.
podcast: A Journey through ‘Feast of the Seven Fishes’