Gefilte Fish
One of the great things about this career is that I get to rediscover things that I once thought that were a tad . . . how shall we say . . . blech. Like gefilte fish.
Having grown up in the Danish modern '60s, I thought a lot of things came from cans and jars. Like gefilte fish. (Someday, I'll tell you my Vienna Sausage story. Or as they say where I'm from: "Vie-EE-nuh SAW-suhj.")
Last night, as every year, Bruce made the real thing for our seder. Yes, gefilte fish is a bit of a saga to make. Don't forget these things were "invented" to "save work" on the Sabbath--in this case, to save the work of separating the fish from its bones. Someone could thus make an inexpensive fish dish in advance. Of course, the work-saver turned out to be laborious. My guess is it's because the people who made the rules weren't the ones who had to implement said rules.
Which brings me back to real food. It's always easier to go the jarred route. But nothing beats the original. And if you're going to celebrate the redemption of an entire race, I think you should go the whole route. (I originally wrote "go whole hog" here but thought maybe it wasn't quite right for Passover.)
So here's what Bruce did:
In the food grinder attached to our KitchenAid mixer, he ground 1 pound haddock, 1/2 pound hake, 2 quartered large yellow onions, 1 celery stalk, and half a medium carrot.
Um, let's just say, it's not a pretty sight. But at least he didn't use carp or pike or any of the other less expensive fish. A special meal calls for a special treat, no?
He then stirred in 6 large eggs, 1 cup matzo meal, 1 tablespoon sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, and some ground black pepper.
Now comes the best part: he also stirred in 3/4 cup mustard oil. It gave the gefilte fish a brilliant yellow hue, very springlike, and also a spiky, slightly mustardy taste. Quite delicious--and a far better choice than plain ol' canola oil which would have added no taste, only calories.
I'm not a canola-phobe as some food writers these days. Canola oil is perfect for dishes in which you need to streamline the fat to let more intense flavors permeate--like chili. But I can't imagine wasting the calories in a dish like this where a little spike brightens the whole thing up considerably.
OK, so he formed the mixture into large cakes (about 1/2 cup each), then poached them with some baby carrots, covered, for 1 1/2 hours in vegetable broth. A very low poach, by the way--just a few bubbles, hardly anything more, because this is very light, almost "fluffy" gefilte fish. Too high a simmer and the cakes would come apart.
He made two sauté pans worth, in fact. Twelve cakes. Enough that we were able to send some to another seder. Nothing like a personal delivery of gefilte fish!
He scooped them out with a large ladle, scooped out all the baby carrots, too, and put them all in 9 x 13-inch baking dishes. He covered them and refrigerated them until we were ready for the meal, in which they got served with a big dollop of horseradish.
Delicious. And real. Nothing fake. Which means it was wonderfully sacred.
Jewish, comfort food, fish, gefilte fish, passover, pesach 
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Reader Comments (3)
Wow, that is soooo much better than in the jar.
But wait, what about the nasty gelatinous goo? None, you say? Then maybe I'll give Bruce's version a go.
Where does one find mustard oil?
Back to my matzohballapalooza. They kind of look like your gefilte fish, actually.
Cheryl: mustard oil is a common fat in East Indian cooking. You can find it at any East Indian market or online at places like kalustyans.com. A very tasty addition to many dishes--although probably not for the elementary-school set.