With Felicia Mohan
If you are eating more fish because of Lent or health reasons, you will want to know about whiting, a white fish that is delicious and very popular among its fans. It is actually the name given to several species of small fish found in the Atlantic regions off North America and Europe, usually a fish related to the cod. In America the name is often given to a version of hake, and in Canada it might be Pollack.
Felicia (Ciaramitaro) Mohan prepares this version that her Grandmother and family has been making for years. In Italian it is often called Merluzzi Fritti, or Fried Whiting.
When eating whiting you have to be careful of the bones. Since it is difficult to extract the bones and make fillets, like you can do with cod or haddock, it is necessary to cook it with the bones in place. If you are willing to eat the fish this way the rewards are a delicious treat for you and everyone else.
Ingredients
Cleaned whiting (merluzzi)
Milk bath
Cooking oil
Flour
Sea salt
Ground black pepper
Instructions
1. After cleaning the whiting, if necessary be sure to clean off the scales by running a knife up from the tail end of the fish towards the head area, scraping as much of the scales away from the skin as possible.
2. Mix salt and pepper in with the flour.
3. After cleaning and drying the fish, dip into milk bath and then into the flour mixture of salt and pepper. Prepare all of the filets you will be cooking before putting any into the hot oil.
4. Place each piece into the oil, one after another, so that they will all cook about the same time.
5. Turn over fish after they have browned on one side, after about a few minutes.
6. When all browned, remove from oil to a paper towel. Let dry and cool.
Serve immediately when cool enough to eat.
Recipe courtesy of Felicia (Ciaramitaro) Mohan, 2010.
From "Food For Thought" Column by Heather Atwood:
Felicia Mohan lives in a sparkling new house in Gloucester, and has twin 11-year-olds: Amanda, playing 12-year-old tennis and ranked No. 32 in New England, and B.J., a catcher for AAU Baseball who will play in the Gloucester All-Star 11-year-old team. Felicia looks like a beautiful, modern mother, struggling to get her kids where they need to go while keeping up with life at home, but Felicia is also adamant about preserving her family's Sicilian heritage, particularly the dishes her grandmother, another Felicia, prepared.
Felicia Mohan's grandfathers were named Joseph Salvatore Ciaramitaro — both of them, spelled the exact same way. One Joseph fished first from his boat The Benjamin and Josephine, which was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Maine, and then he fished from his Benjamin C, named after his father-in-law, Benjamin Cucuru. Later he founded Capt'n Joe's Lobster Co. on the wharf in Gloucester, now run by Felicia's brother, Joey, and cousin Frankie.
Felicia's other grandfather owned Pat's Center Grocery, that not only sold groceries but provided all the fishing boats with food for their long trips, delivering the "speza," as the supplies were called, to each boat before it left port.
Grandpa with the wharf was married to Felicia's namesake. Holidays at this Felicia's house began a full week ahead as all the women in the family gathered at her home, which had two full kitchens, to cook together. When school let out at 3, the children went straight to Grandma's house that week because that's where their mothers were cooking. Not only were these women making all the traditional Italian holiday foods, from appetizers such as octopus salad, a standard which the men insisted upon at every holiday, to a wealth of Italian cookies, homemade bread, and New World foods such as pies, but the women were also making ordinary dinners those weeknights for all their husbands and children.
Felicia and Joseph have passed away. Now, holiday meals are at young Felicia's, where 35 to 40 people come to celebrate. Felicia, like her grandmother, still sets a formal table with china and linen; her custom-built table seats 25, with two more tables in the great room for overflow, replacing her grandmother's enormous table that started in the kitchen, extended through the dining room, the hallway and ended at the living room.
In her large, creamy, new kitchen, Felicia still makes dishes like braciole, spiedini, and olive gonzathe. She makes videos for this newspaper showing how to prepare her grandmother's special bread crumbs, "mudiga," with chicken and steak. This past December, Felicia gathered all the cousins together to make their great-grandmother's Santa Lucia dessert, "cuccia," a vanilla pudding made with wheatberries which the playful great-grandmother had always encouraged the children to eat in a race.
Contact Heather at heatheraa@aol.com. Her blog is at gloucestertimes.com/foodforthought
