Gefilte fish

I just came across an amusing video of Abbie Hoffman talking about gefilte fish (and Dr. Spock):
Abbie Hoffman on gefilte fish

Disappointingly, it only shows his fish at the end of the segment, all made, not the cooking process. So here's a how-to:
How to make (Australian) gefilte fish for Passover

You'll find the only recipe I consider worth making from scratch here:
Baked gefilte fish

LAZ wrote:You'll find the only recipe I consider worth making from scratch here:
Baked gefilte fish

LAZ:

I think making gefilte the "old-fashioned" way can definitely be worth making, although I wasn't going to do so this year until I found some beautiful pike and whitefish at WFM. Stock made from scratch, fish chopped by hand, etc.



I'll admit it is a lot of effort - it took my wife and I two hours to get it into the pot - but we enjoyed every minute.

Bill/SFNM

Bill,

For the love of Moses, that's some beautiful looking fish! My Mom didn't make any fish this year. Next year, I'm taking on the mantle of making gefilte fish for our family. Your post has inspired me.

Bill,

For the second time today I feel the need to invoke Carol Channing.

Sweet Carol Channing's Ghost your Gefilte fish looks incredible!

Enjoy,
Gary

Thank you stevez and Gary. I really envy you guys having access to the correct fish for this dish. Finding fresh pike and whitefish here was a real surprise. Usually they doctor up some ground halibut which is barely better than the jarred stuff.

LAZ wrote:You'll find the only recipe I consider worth making from scratch here:
Baked gefilte fish

Bill/SFNM wrote:I think making gefilte the "old-fashioned" way can definitely be worth making, although I wasn't going to do so this year until I found some beautiful pike and whitefish at WFM. Stock made from scratch, fish chopped by hand, etc.

That's gorgeous fish, Bill.

If I do say so, the homemade fish I used to make was beautiful, too -- but as mentioned in the linked post, it was a letdown to find that after all the effort, it tasted very little better than Bubbe's "doctored up" version. The "doctoring up," however, definitely improves jarred fish. If you start with a good commercial product, you can get very tasty results, even if they don't look quite so lovely.

The baked recipe is ugly in comparison, but the flavor is remarkably different and delicious. Of course, it is not so healthful as traditional gefilte fish.

I am usually the gefilte fish maker in the family, but this year my mother asked me to bring something else. She used the frozen gefilte fish she found at Jewel, claiming it was just delicious. I think she was the only one who found it to be tasty -- I'll be making fish next year, even if she tells me not to.

It will most definitely annoy my children, who complain about how bad the house smells while I am making my stock and boiling my fish.

Bill, I was envious of your fish when I saw the pictures!

Suzy

Is there as much of a bias in Chicago against carp as there is in Cleveland? My mother taught me how to make her fish (and we were livelong New Yorkers) with 1 part whitefish, 1 part pike and 1/2 part carp. The carp, which is of course a gutter fish, is for texture and mouthfeel more than taste.

I try to make fish once a year, because its a "feel" dish and I don't want to lose it. The whole megillah is on my blog - www.funplayingwithfood.blogspot.com - but here are a few photos:


Raw Fish Mix from Cleveland's Mister Brisket http://www.misterbrisket.com/NewFiles/whoishe.html- 2# Whitefish, 2# Pike, 1# Carp (and you wouldn't believe how I had to beg and plead the first time I asked for carp!) Ground With Onion


Making the Fish Stock

While the stock simmers, I add fresh eggs, fresh ground white pepper, kosher salt and matzo meal to the fish, and bring it together until it "feels" right. Then - shaped into ovals and into the pot! Add carrots after the first 1.5 hours, then cook another 1.5 hours. Chill and:



I cannot eat jarred fish, no matter what you do to it. And what to eat with the fish but home made Horseradish, from our garden:





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Happy Passover, LTHers!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-still-ha ... 1505748453

Thanks for the Referenced article.
I can remember jarred Gefilte fish going back decades until I decided to make my own.
With fresh filleted fish being easy to obtain these days and the ubiquitous food processor, it's relatively easy to make.
But I would hate to see those jars disappear from grocery shelves!-Richard

The key, I recently discovered, is using as little matzoh meal as possible to hold the pieces together. The less you use, the lighter and more tender your fish will be. For the first time ever I made a very successful batch of gefilte fish using this recipe by Joan Nathan from Jewish Cooking in America (1st edition), as relayed by Corby Kummer. I tweaked it a bit, omitted the parsnip, cut the sugar in half, added a bit of extra salt, etc. but overall, the instructions were solid. In the end, I could/should have even used less matzoh meal than the recipe called for but still the results were excellent.

And this bit of information also proved quite useful:

*Ask your fishmonger to grind the fish. Ask him to reserve the tails, fins, heads, and bones. Be sure he gives you the bones and trimmings. The more whitefish you add, the softer your gefilte fish will be.

=R=

I have made my last few batches without any matzo meal at all. I originally eliminated it so I could give some to a friend who is gluten free, but then I found I liked the lighter texture. I use about half whitefish and half carp. It is very light - like approaching matzo ball territory. Ultimately, I remember them being a bit meatier growing up. I'm still undecided as to which way I like best.

I also like to sweat the vegetables (leeks, parsnips, and onion) with dill and parsley and then process that with the egg before mixing it into the fish. I like the subtle herby undertones that method produces.

gastro gnome wrote:I have made my last few batches without any matzo meal at all. I originally eliminated it so I could give some to a friend who is gluten free, but then I found I liked the lighter texture. I use about half whitefish and half carp. It is very light - like approaching matzo ball territory. Ultimately, I remember them being a bit meatier growing up. I'm still undecided as to which way I like best.

Interesting. I'll try that next time; making a few without matzoh meal as testers before I decide whether or not to add any matzoh meal to the rest of the batch.

My most recent batch, my first genuine success with this dish, was, perhaps, a bit heavier than I would have chosen from a purely culinary point of view but it was almost an exact match texturally to what my Grandma used to make, so in that respect, the endeavor was a huge success.

Also, I forgot to mention this earlier but homemade horseradish is a must. It's so potent compared to even the freshest store-bought, and definitely worth the effort. Just be sure to have some ski goggles on hand because you really do need to grate it by hand and it stings your eyes like a motherf*cker when you're standing over it grating.

=R=

Grate it on the stove top with your exhaust fan on high.

The Gentile Origins of Gefilte Fish
How the Ashkenazi classic became a staple of Jewish holiday meals.

...
Gefilte Fish for Lent

Gil Marks breaks down gefilte fish's gentile origins in his 2010 book, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food. First he takes it back to the Ancient Romans, who he says would frequently skin animals, chop up their flesh, and stuff it back into the skin before cooking.

But it's the upper-class Medieval Germans and French cooks he credits with creating something that sounds an awful lot like the gefilte fish we know today, complete with stuffed pike, perch, and other large freshwater fish. "The first medieval record of this fish dish, gefuelten hechden (stuffed pike), was in a non-Jewish source in southern Germany around 1350, in the oldest German cookbook, Daz Buoch von Guoter Spise (The Book of Good Food)," he wrote. "The dish was popular among upper-class Catholics during Lent and other days when meat was forbidden."

Marks described the dish as poached, mashed fish flavored with sage, caraway seeds, saffron, salt, and pepper. Once the fish was stuffed, they'd set it on a wooden grill and roast it. Recipes for a similar stuffed fish dish started showing up shortly thereafter in French manuscripts in which ground almonds and saffron were mixed into the flesh.
...

I'm not buying that line of reasoning, Cathy. Gefilte fish is never stuffed into a skin and roasted, it's a poached quenelle.

JoelF wrote:I'm not buying that line of reasoning, Cathy. Gefilte fish is never stuffed into a skin and roasted, it's a poached quenelle.

Gotta side with Cathy, "gefilte" literally translates to "stuffed." Today's preparation has evolved but my understanding of the traditional recipe was that it was placed back inside the fish for cooking. I'm pretty sure my mother's grandmother prepared it that way back in the day in Hungary (my mother was still a fairly young girl when the War started s she would have just observed).

Not to mention that there are numerous regional differences in the preparations. Today's standard is based on the jarred stuff that prevailed in pre-war New York.

Hi,

The only time I ever had the stuffed version was at a friend's home in Moscow, USSR.

I was quoting an article and not making a personal declaration.

Regards,
Cathy2

Cathy2 wrote:"The dish was popular among upper-class Catholics during Lent and other days when meat was forbidden."

Marks described the dish as poached, mashed fish flavored with sage, caraway seeds, saffron, salt, and pepper. Once the fish was stuffed, they'd set it on a wooden grill and roast it. Recipes for a similar stuffed fish dish started showing up shortly thereafter in French manuscripts in which ground almonds and saffron were mixed into the flesh.

Sounds luxurious! That's medieval Catholicism: Letter of Lenten regulations but not quite the spirit.