As the gefilte fish cooled, a jelly of an extraordinarily delicate sort coalesced, and, as a child, I had a passion for the fish balls and their rich jelly, along with the obligatory khreyn (Yiddish for horseradish). My mother would fashion the mixture into balls about two inches in diameter-two to three pounds of fish would allow a dozen or more substantial fish balls-and then poach these gently with a few slices of carrot. (Litvak gefilte fish, I was told, used more pepper, which is how she made it-my father was a Litvak, born in Lithuania.) She would then mix the ground fish with raw eggs, matzo meal, and pepper and sugar. (The fishmonger delivered the fish alive, swimming in a pail of water.) The fish had to be skinned, boned, and fed into a grinder-we had a massive metal grinder attached to the kitchen table, and my mother would sometimes let me turn the handle. Our gefilte fish was basically carp, to which pike, whitefish, and sometimes perch or mullet would be added. When I was growing up, my mother would take off from her surgical duties early on Friday afternoon and devote her time, before the coming of Shabbat, to preparing gefilte fish and other Sabbath dishes. Gefilte fish is not an everyday dish it is to be eaten mainly on the Jewish Sabbath in Orthodox households, when cooking is not allowed.
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