Editor's note: This recipe is excerpted from The 2nd Avenue Deli Cookbook, by Sharon Lebewohl and Rena Bulkin.
Gefilte fish, today a prized delicacy, dates from the Middle Ages in Germany, where it was conceived as a fish stretcher — an ancient relative of Hamburger Helper. Religious Jews embraced it as a highlight of Friday-night dinners, because it solved a spiritual dilemma: though the Talmud suggests eating fish on Friday nights, it is forbidden (because it's considered work) to separate fish from bones on the Sabbath. We've found that most people who say they don't like gefilte fish have only tasted the supermarket variety, sold in jars, which is like saying you don't like filet mignon when you've only tasted beef jerky. Happily, preparing authentic gefilte fish from scratch is not an arcane skill possessed only by Jewish great-grandmothers. With today's food processors, it's not even especially difficult. Our recipe is sweet, in the Polish tradition; Russian gefilte fish is more peppery.
· Because whitefish, carp, and pike are no longer commonly eaten, your fish store will probably require that you order them ahead of time and buy the whole fish. Be aware that you should order twice as many pounds of whole fish as you want of the finished fillets. Thus, to get 1 1/2 pounds of whitefish fillet, you should order 3 pounds of whole fish — approximately 2 fish. · For the best flavor, we prefer a mix of all 3 kinds of fish: 2 whole whitefish, 1 whole pike, and about 1/3 of a whole carp (save the rest for another use). After filleting, this comes out to about 1 1/2 pounds of whitefish fillet, 1 pound of pike fillet, and a 1/2 pound of carp fillet. · To keep the patties very delicate, we like to form them with 2 large cooking spoons rather than making patties: Use one spoon to scoop up a heaping spoonful of batter, then use the other to gently push the batter into the boiling stock. Made this way, the recipe will yield more than 12 patties. They will be slightly misshapen, but extremely light.
