talk of the table
Adventures with Gefilte Fish BY DAN FREEDMAN
W
hen my grandmother was 16, circa 1905, she journeyed alone from Smargon (in today’s Belarus) to Ellis Island. Like so many other Jewish women of her generation, she rose from the sweatshops of Lower Manhattan to marriage, motherhood and middle-class respectability. But she never lost touch with her origins. The scent of chopped liver always greeted us as we walked through her door. The smell of dill wafted up from the basement, where pickles were brining. The pièces de résistance? Kneidlach (matzah balls) and, of course, gefilte fish. Like the rest of her immigrant generation, she made gefilte the way her mother made it…and her mother’s mother, and on and on. Grandma died in 1969 when I was just 16. Without her wizardry, I developed a paradoxical connection to gefilte fish. I came to appreciate it as a delivery vehicle for my true love, horseradish. But as time went on, it became harder and 62
harder to find really good gefilte fish. Maybe that’s because, in the post-Grandma world, gefilte fish more often than not came out of a glass jar. Only now can I admit to myself: It was awful! This year, I decided enough was enough. In addition to the Passover hope of “Next year in Jerusalem,” I would add my own personal plea for deliverance: “No more jars! This year, homemade gefilte fish!” I set about finding a source of inspiration, ultimately choosing The Gefilte Manifesto, by Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern. The book promises “New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods.” It includes several recipes for gefilte fish, which, I learned, falls into three varieties: a baked loaf-like terrine, poached quenelles (small oblong balls) and “Old-World Stuffed Gefilte Fish.” “Gefilte” means “stuffed,” so “stuffed gefilte” means…stuffed stuff? No, the recipe calls for mixed gefilte layered inside a shell composed of fish skin and head. I decided to make the first two. I called up Yoskowitz, and he encouraged my efforts with a true rabbinic
touch. “Gefilte fish is one of the food traditions that connect Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European origin to the past in a way that many others don’t,” he told me. “It’s a bridge between the Old World and the New.” But there were obstacles. The first was obtaining the fish itself. Traditional gefilte is made from freshwater whitefish, pike, carp or a combination. I could not find any of these in the greater Washington, DC area. The terrine called for smoked whitefish and flounder fillets, both easily obtainable. But I lowballed the flounder, using a pound of fillets instead of the recipe’s one-and-a-half pounds. The recipe calls for coarse pulsing the fish in a food processor, and I overpulsed a bit to get the dill and baby spinach mixed in. The greens are a modern touch, Yoskowitz says. I guessed as much, since Grandma’s fish had no green flecks in it. I put the mix in two loaf pans and baked it at 375 degrees, as instructed. The result? I’d rate it a “so-so-plus.” Good, but nothing like Grandma’s. (However, it was delicious atop a bagel, like a drier version of whitefish salad.) Next up were the quenelles. I approached the recipe with trepidation. On Yoskowitz’s recommendation, I subbed in tilapia. Later I found out that tilapia is native to the Sea of Galilee, which, looking back, was a promising start. One piece of advice in The Gefilte Manifesto that I took to heart: Use the bones, heads and fins of the fish to make a seafood broth. Basically, you dump the parts in boiling water and add carrots, onions and salt. Then I mixed up the fish in the food processor, much as I had done for the terrine. It rolled nicely into coarse egg-shaped balls, just as the recipe prescribed. The eight balls I gently inserted into the simmering broth fell to the bottom. But a minute or two later, they bubbled back up to the surface. They had maintained their egg-like shape while submerged. I remembered Grandma’s fish balls bobbing on the surface, so I knew I had hit pay dirt; this version of gefilte fish would be in the zone. I made sure not to drown the quenelles in horseradish for the first taste, and final-
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