Stop making those retching noises! One of my favorite things about Jewish holidays is the opportunity to indulge in gefilte fish. I realize that I am the only person below the age of 50 who enjoys this delicacy, but that is because my generation generally was forced to eat gefilte fish from a can or jar. That is truly nasty, vile, and disgusting shit, and it has as much to do with gefilte fish as potted meat food product does with steak.
In truth, gefilte fish resembles pate more than an actual fish. It is a ball of ground up whitefish, carp, and/or pike, mixed with salt, pepper, and onions. The recipe deviates a bit depending on which part of Eastern European it is made. Some people add sugar, others add beets, and still others might throw in some ground carrots and parsnip. Whichever derivation is used, the resulting fish ball should be sweet, and not covered in gelatinous goop. (This is exactly where the foul canned or jarred fish goes very, very wrong.)
Back in the olden days, when I was a young girl growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, we spent all the Jewish holidays at my grandparents' apartment. My bubbe cooked for days on end to prepare the feasts. Since I was lucky and only was served homemade gefilte fish, I never understood why people thumbed their noses at the humble dish. Then I got out to New York and was served something from a jar. If someone was unfortunate enough to believe that this was what the dish was supposed to taste like, hatred of gefilte fish made total sense.
At my in-law's Passover dinner on Saturday, they served gefilte fish freshly made at the fish counter of the local grocery store. (At least I think that is where my mother-in-law said it came from; she may have said a Jewish deli.) It was moist, sweet, and free of gelatinous goop. Delicious!
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That is so interesting, because I once read a description of someone making gefilte fish, and I was like, how odd that it *sounds* good, but it tastes horrible. But, like you say, I've only had the canned/jarred kind. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteyou really should've pushed more for gefilte fish when we ate at the deli.
ReplyDeleteThis is going to sound insane (from me? ha ha ha), but I need to closely inspect gefilte fish before it served. Some lazier delis served the canned/jarred crap that Liz mentioned. Once the in-laws took us to a kosher deli in Long Island for Chanukah. I ordered the gefilte fish, and was horrified when a gray blob with goop was brought to me, Especially for the amount they charged. We complained that we expected something fresh, and they took it back without a word in their own defense. Now I'm suspicious of anything I can't eyeball or smell before I eat it. Too risky.
ReplyDeleteSo homemade gefilte fish is to jarred as homemade cranberry sauce is to the kind with the can marks on it?
ReplyDeleteEven though I have not tried either kind of gefilte fish, I will have to vehemently disagree with Sueb0b's comparison. Cranberry sauce with the can marks on it is awesome. As an adult, I can definitely appreciate homemade cranberry sauce but when I was a kid, I refused to eat anykind of cranberry sauce which contained visible berries.
ReplyDelete-Steph