Gefilte Fish Wednesday: Guest Blogger Edition

Note: Lisa invited us to Seder of course, but we’ve been too overwhelmed with the fuss of the move to tackle a trip to the East side on top of everything. She teases us mercilessly about our East side fears and we let her because she’s a fabulous cook. Since she couldn’t feed us her Passover feast, she offered to feed the blog instead. Here’s NEV’s first guest blogger, Lisa Jaffe Hubbell, on a Passover staple, gefilte fish.

by Lisa Jaffe Hubbell

There is a gene whose presence makes one’s nose wrinkle in disgust at the mere mention of gefilte fish. It’s a new mutation – probably dating back to the advent of bottled gefilte fish. I’m here to tell you that gefilte fish doesn’t have to be bad. Indeed, I’d challenge any fish lover to try my gefilte fish and not think it’s dandy.

Gefilte fish is a staple at Jewish holiday tables – Rosh Hashanah, Passover, even Friday night Sabbath in some homes. It has a long history among Ashkenazi Jews. Gefilte is Yiddish for stuffed or filled. Originally, fish skins or whole fish were stuffed with a mixture of ground fish, matzah meal or bread crumbs, onions, and spices. The kind of fish depended on where you were from, but common varieties were summer carp, pike, whitefish, and hake – varieties I’ve never tried and don’t even know if one can get here. Polish Jews enjoyed a version that was sweet – something that elicits a big fat “yuk” from other Eastern European Jews. Rather than putting the fish forcemeat into another fish, it is formed into balls and poached in fish stock.

I’ve got a lot of Jewish cookbooks. Most gefilte fish recipes in them are basic. They include fish, egg, matzah meal, salt, and pepper – maybe a little sugar. A couple are scary doctor-the-bottled-stuff recipes. One book I have, How to Cook Like a Jewish Mother, recommends taking a jar of fish and simmering it with a sliced onion. Voilà, gefilte fish! Can you see my nose wrinkling?

A few of the cookbooks have variations on the gefilte fish theme. Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking In America has recipes for Southwestern Gefilte Fish with Salsa, and an Elegant and Easy Gourmet Gefilte Fish Paté that is baked rather than poached. In Francine Prince’s New Jewish Cuisine, the gefilte fish recipe calls for cayenne, nutmeg, ginger, and wine.

Our family recipe is of the basic variety, although the women of the family differ on the kinds of fish they use. My mom uses two thirds Chilean Sea Bass – happily she buys it from Whole Foods so it’s from a certified sustainable fishery – and one third salmon. Usually, I do half salmon and half sole. This year I was hoping to score some white king salmon for my fish. White king has the highest fat content of all salmon. It is very rare – just about one in a hundred fish is a white king, and you can’t tell by looking at a freshly caught salmon if it will white or red. It is a delectable fish. I often throw it on the grill naked, and am happy to eat it without adornment. It has that much flavor.

Alas and alack, there was no white king at Whole Paycheck. Probably for the best – gefilte fish made with it might come out a pallid color reminiscent of the nose wrinkling bottled gefilte fish. It was regular old king salmon for me. And I got the previously frozen one, not fresh. When you are grinding, mixing, and poaching, you don’t need to shell out the extra $10 per pound.

I had a discussion with the fishmonger about using my usual sole or going with something different, like snapper. I let him convince me of the snapper. It was, as usual, delicious. Not a wrinkled nose in sight. Even my 10 year old, who laughs at the notion of eating fish balls as only a 10 year old can, ate some. And he’s very averse to Anything New.

We serve our fish with very strong horseradish – either freshly grated if my brother’s around (because I don’t want to torture myself that much) or purchased. You can get bottles of red wimpy horseradish, but why bother? Look for something white with no ingredients other than horseradish and perhaps vinegar and salt. Manischewitz now makes a wasabi horseradish that Husband says is pretty strong and tasty, too. Also, it’s a delightful green.

My personal feeling is that gefilte fish is good only the night it’s made and the next day, so the remainder is off to a neighbor who has fond memories of homemade gefilte fish from her youth as one of the Frozen Chosen of Minnesota.

If you want to try it, here’s the basic recipe. My mom’s notation says it will feed 8, but only if the eight people eat a lot of fish at a sitting.

Three pounds fish – avoid meaty fish like halibut or tuna. And needless to say, shellfish is out in this recipe. Use at least two kinds of fish.
Scant tablespoon of salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 eggs
1 small onion, roughly chopped
½ cup matzah meal
1 scant cup of water

Put it all in a food processor.

Form into balls and poach in fish stock or water with a carrot, onion, and celery. Cook for 1 to 1 ½ hours. Remove fish to a covered dish and ladle some of the broth over the top. Chill thoroughly. Serve with horseradish.

Good Yontif. And stay away from bottled fish.