THE GEFILTE FISH CABAL

Our grandmothers lorded their superiority over us by declaring that we could never master the complexities of gefilte fish, as though they alone held the secrets of the Holy Grail. It wasn’t so much that Grandma refused to share her “a little this, a little that” recipe. She simply put me off with a look that said, “Why bother? It’s too hard. You’d never get it anyways.”

Even as my culinary forays became more adventurous and I dabbled in the intricacies of pate, ceviche and paella, her posthumous “hands off” admonition chilled my desire for experimentation. The nonpareil ivory, sweet-savory gefilte fish at the venerable Second Avenue Deli, however, enticed me into taking my chances with the impossible. But, which fish to use? I reminded myself of a furor that nearly tore out family apart:

Grandma, with whom I shared a bedroom until I left for college, had lived in Chicago since 1906. She had produced boatloads of gefilte fish, all of which was snow-white, because of the pristine fish of the Great Lakes. One day in 1966, Father announced that the family was moving to San Francisco. As reality set in, Grandma agreed to survey the offerings at Fisherman’s Wharf. She sniffed and put on her most dour face: “It isn’t white like Chicago fish. Feh, it looks like it came from the ocean.” Nonetheless, she reluctantly acquiesced to making one pot of gefilte fish, which was as delicious as always. She, however, invoked every Yiddish anathema she knew and swore to never again make “that ugly brown fish” for the rest of her life.

Despite Grandma’s curses and damnations, I ventured into the murkiest of waters and attempted to make gefilte fish with salmon, the least expensive kosher fish available around here. “Pink gefilte fish?” I hear you saying. Wrong. By some mystical alchemy, when simmered to perfection, salmon-based gefilte fish turns, OK, not snowy white, but an entirely tolerable shade of ecru. Go figure.

I opt for gefilte fish that is on the sweetish side, something else for which Grandma would disown me. Livaks simply don’t. It would infer that I was a Galitzianer sympathizer, and we all know about them . . .

So you see, now I have gained entrée into the secret society and debunked the myth that that only our bubbehs had the intuition to make edible gefilte fish. The feat has gained me a modicum of recognition not only within the family, but also even among a few respected chefs, who have sampled my wares under the alias of quenelles des saumons. One young chef from the bayous of Louisiana, where a Yiddishe ponim is rarely seen, however, instantly exclaimed, “Hey, you can’t fool me! That’s gefilte fish! Where’s the horseradish?”

This did not deter the other chefs from asking for my recipe. But now that I had been initiated into the Gefilte Fish Cabal, you may be sure of what I answered them: “Why bother? It’s too hard. You’d never get it anyways. Now go back to your bouillabaisse, and leave gefilte fish to God’s Elect!”