1-Apr-2009-
No Joke: Gefilte Fish That's Not Gooish For lots of Jews under 30, gefilte fish can be summed up thusly: Funny? Sure. Edible? Not so much.
We have taunted it with songs, jokes and kitschy T-shirts that sport images of Manischewitz jars and slogans such as "Gefilte Fish: The Other White Meat." We enjoy YouTube clips of gefilte fish wrestling promoted by the satirical Heeb Magazine.
It didn't seem fair to us that Jell-O and whipped cream always get all the fun," says contributing editor Oliver Noble. (The magazine came up with four cheeky Olympic events in 2008 that ran concurrent with the Summer Games in Beijing, one of which was the wrestling. Bouts were held in an inflatable kiddie pool filled with a few cases of fish balls and goo. Readers vied to compete; the winner got a lifetime supply of Gold's mustard. The loser ended up faacedown in, well you know.)
That we do not partake is our loss, we're told each year at family seders, when the story of Exodus is retold by reading the Haggadah. But the transmogrification of gefilte fish is hardly our fault. We only know from store-bought jars, whose contents were plopped on a piece of lettuce with horseradish as a first course. Few of us associate the ancient delicacy with the smells of our grandmothers' Lower East Side kitchens or the inventive savvy of ancestors who knew how to stretch a food dollar.
In Central and Eastern Europe hundreds of years ago, the dish solved two problems: Jewish women could use but a single carp to feed their families on the Sabbath and avoid the Talmudic prohibition against removing bones from their food on that holy day of the week. By removing the fish innards and grinding the bones with easy-to-find ingredients such as onions, matzoh and eggs before stuffing the mixture back into the fish skin, the cooks created a dish that obeyed and enhanced Jewish holidays.
Families that could not afford a whole fish eventually reworked the original "stuffed" (gefilte,in Yiddish) recipe by serving the mixture as patties or balls. Gefilte fish, as culinary historians have noted, is the kosher equivalent of haggis or scrapple.
The truth is we are not exactly turned on by what's in manufactured, mainstream gefilte fish and its goo. Originally the latter was fish broth made gelatinous from long-simmered fish heads and bones. By World War II, American Jews were spared the long processes and presented with ready-to-serve gefilte fish, vacuum-packed in glass jars and cans.
But the label on a modern gefilte fish jar tells a story: carrageenan, locust bean gum, potassium chloride, dipotassium phosphate, natural flavor,sodium hexametaphosphate and sodium tripolyphosphate.
Over the past decade, kosher epicureans have attempted to reengineer gefilte fish for our sushi-loving, diet-conscious and allergic palates: Smoked Whitefish Gefilte Fish With Lemon-Horesradish sauce, Springtime Green Salad With Gefilte Fish Balls, Sugar Snap Peas and Asparagus. Even a "Top Chef" take from Season 3 Winner Hung Hyunh that called for cilantro, kaffir lime leaves and tamarind sauce.
Amusing.
Maybe if more of us had been introduced to preservative-free, kitsch-free gefilte fish, things might be different. About half a dozen brands packaged as frozen uncooked logs are on the market; a store that isn't primarily kosher may carry one of them. The most popular brand is A&B Famous Gefilte Fish, which sells about a million 22 ounce rolls each year.
While working on a paper for school, I recently had the opportunity to tour the A&B plant in Paterson, N.J., with Motty Koth, son of company founder Abraham Koth, and his colleague, Moishe Majer.
In the early 1980's, A&B was a small fish store in the Hassidic enclave of Monsey, N.Y. When a client unexpectedly canceled a large order of fresh fish, Abraham and business partner Benjamin Berger decided to make it into gefilte fish. At the outset, Motty Koth says, they "wanted it to be 100 percent natural, fresher, better than the jar, so we decided to freeze it so we didn't have to use any preservatives." Local Monseyians loved A&B's invention, and the business eventually opened it's New Jersey factory.
"Everything is fresh," Majer says. "If we can't get the fish fresh, we just don't make gefilte fish that month."
The ingredients in A&B's sweet, half-sweet, sugar-free and savory varieties are simple: white fish, mullet, potatoes (or matzoh meal), onions, eggs cottonseed oil and spices.
The long, frigid room at the heart of the factory had a joyous demeanor. A Jewish ritual supervisor called a mashgiach pored over piles of raw fish, one at a time, to ensure kosher quality, while other men of varying Hasidic sects cracked eggs, chopped onions, loaded the giant mixer and stuffed the filling into plastic rolls for freezing.
After a day knee-deep in fish juice, I returned home with a roll of Homestyle Gefilte Fish with Less Sugar, shocked to find I was actually hungry. First, I opened the window; why risk it? Then, I peeled away the plastic wrap and dropped the roll in a boiling pot of carrots, onions and broth. I waited a full 90 minutes, refrigerated the log and finally schmeared a bite with red horseradish. My first taste of gefilte fish, sans goo, was fresh, spicy and surprisingly delicious. This I could eat. No joke. Who's with me?
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