My mom died last friday night, a little bit after midnight. I’ll probably write something about her, when I’m feeling up to it, but not yet. Being a jewish dad, when I’m depressed, what do I do? I cook.<\/p>\n
Last year, for the first time ever, I made homemade gefilte fish for Pesach. If you didn’t grow up Jewish, odds are you’re not familiar with gefilte fish. It’s a traditional ashkenazi (that is, eastern european jewish) dish. It was originally a ground fish mixture cooked inside the body cavity of a fish. It evolved into just the stuffing mixture, simmered in a fish stock. These days, most people just buy it in a jar. If you grew up with it, even out of the jar, it’s a treat; if you didn’t, and you’ve been exposed to it, it looks and smells like dog food.<\/p>\n
Honestly, I love the stuff. In general, I’m not a big fan of most traditional Jewish foods. But there’s something about gefilte fish. But even as I enjoy it, I can see the gross side. It’s crazy overprocessed – I mean, come on – it’s fish<\/em> that will keep, unrefrigerated, for years!<\/p>\n But made fresh, it’s a whole different kettle of fish. This stuff is really good. You’ll definitely recognize the flavor of this as gefilte fish, but it’s a much cleaner flavor. It tastes like fish<\/em>, not like stale overprocessed fish guts.<\/p>\n So this year, I’m depressed over my mom; after the funeral, I sent my wife out to buy me a bunch of fish, and I made up a batch. This time, I kept notes on how I did it – and it turned out even better than last year.<\/p>\n It’s got a bit of a twist in the recipe. I’m married to a chinese woman, so when the Jewish holidays roll around, I always try to find some way of putting an asian spin on the food, to reflect the nature of our family. So when I cooked the gefilte fish, instead of cooking it in the traditional simple fish broth, I cooked it in dashi. It’s not chinese, but it’s got a lot of flavors that are homey for a chinese person.<\/p>\n So… here’s the recipe for Mark’s homemade salmon dashi gefilte fish!<\/p>\n Ingredients<\/b><\/p>\n (For the fish for this, you really want the bones, the skins, and the head. If you’ve got a fish market that will fillet it for you, and then give you all of the parts, have them do that. Otherwise, do it yourself. Don’t worry about how well you can fillet it – it’s going to get ground up, so if you do a messy job, it’s not a problem.)<\/em><\/p>\n Instructions<\/b><\/p>\n\n
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