Gefilte Fish Recipes
Slice Of Life By Eileen Goltz
In many homes holiday meals live and die by the kind of gefilte fish that is served. I come from a home where my mother schelped me to the fish store, picked out the PERFECT carp, pike, buffalo and other various and assorted fish, chopped and mixed for 40 days and 40 nights (this is a high holiday metaphor) to create the perfect blend of fish, eggs, onions and matzo meal. She then wrapped a piece of skin around the patty (hence the word "gefilte" which means filled or stuffed in Yiddish/German) and poached the patties in water with carrots and onions. 2 solid days of hard labor for something my father wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, let alone horseradish. Luckily, the rest of the family LOVED it so; my dad just ate extra salad and complained about the smell. Now a days, my friends and I find that our prep time is limited. We all buy the already prepared/frozen but not yet cooked variety of gefilte fish (for those of you who prefer the jarred stuff, this column is over). We've all cooked it the traditional way but just about everyone I know has "experimented" by adding and tweaking the basic frozen loaf of fish and turned them into culinary masterpieces. While there are a few very good varieties of frozen gefilte fish, I will admit to a prejudice, I adore using A&G Gefilte fish. If fact, I like their products so much I've worked with both Yossie and Moti at A&B to help create recipes for their customer over the past 7 years. The following recipes are one's I've collected from friends, family, readers, and web sites. I've tried to attribute the source and kept the instructions pretty much the way I found them. Some of them are very detailed and others are well, much like my mom's recipe for the made from scratch variety, less detailed. I'm ALWAYS looking for new ways to use the different flavors of gefilte fish so please don't hesitate to send them to me at eztlog@hotmail.com. Enjoy making the following recipes. They're all delicious.