Many people think that gefilte fish is some kind of mixture you make in the kitchen rather than one of God’s creatures. Are they wrong! Each year as soon as the frost on the great Gefilte lakes is thin enough to break the surface, observant fisherman set out to catch gefilte fish. Now unlike your normal fish, gefilte fish cannot be caught with a rod and a reel or your standard bait. The art of catching gefilte fish was handed down for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. For all I know Moses used to go gefilte fish catching.
Enough already, you say, so how is it done? Well, you go up to the edge of the lake with some matzo. You stand at the edge of the lake and whistle and say, “here, boy!” “here boy!” The fish (who are very smart and understand English) can’t resist the smell of matzo! They come together to the edge of the lake where they jump into the jars and are bottled on the spot. When you figure out which end of the fish is the head and which is the tail, not to mention where the eyes are, let me know! -- Lawrence Sherry
Happy Passover!
I have a recipe for a Gefilte Fish Mold that requires 6lbs of Whitefish. I ask at the fish counter for Whitefish and they want to know WHAT kind. How do I know? I just know my mother-in-law (god rest her soul) says Whitefish in the recipe. Since I can't get it... I can't make it. So sad.
ReplyDeleteThat is sad; my grandmother's recipes were pretty vague; a little this, a pinch of that. Frustrating. Maybe they could tell you what kind of white fish they use at your local deli?
ReplyDeleteI ate Gefilte Fish all the time as a child. It was the only meat I could digest easily. My mother used to order it from the grocery store in our small west Texas town.
ReplyDeleteWhat is hilarious is I'm not Jewish, no one in my family is Jewish (except for a couple of cousins who married into the family), and no one in our family tree (that I know of yet) is Jewish. I didn't find out it was Jewish "soul food" until I went to his grandmother's house, was feeling peckish, and she heard me squeal in glee, "Gefilte fish!!" They both stood and watched me in awe as I wolfed it down.
Although I'm not Jewish, my parents were from an ethnically diverse part of old Southside Chicago. They always kept various kosher deli foods on hand. Now, my wife wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes when I get a jar of "picklefish." She tolerates my peculiar tastes, and I would do the same for her, if we could think of whatever that might be. However, as she puts it, "I dunno, you'll eat amost anything."
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