New Year's Gefilte Fish

Here's a recipe we adapted for new year's eve from another excellent and famous cookbook we sometimes use: "The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden. Roden has traveled far to collect traditional recipes from Jewish homes around the globe. The result is a historical masterpiece on Jewish cuisine with an abundance of successful recipes.

Gefilte Fish was traditionally served as stuffed fish skin with chopped fish inside. Today only the stuffing is prepared by poaching fish balls in fish stock and serving them with stock jelly and carrot. It's not difficult work, but it takes a while as these balls need to go through several procedures.

The Ingredients:

(for the stock)

2 carrots, sliced

1 onion, sliced

2 fish heads

2 tsp salt

3 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp white pepper

(for the fish balls)

1 medium onion

2 eggs

2 tsp salt

2 tsp sugar

white pepper

75 gr matzo meal

1 kg fresh water fish fillets, skinned. Try to get carp for this. We used a mix of cod and halibut, but the balls didn't turn out firm enough.

The Recipe:

Put the stock ingredients in a saucepan, add 2.5 liters water  to cover the fish. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

For the fish balls put the onion, eggs, salt, sugar and pepper in a food processor and blend to a cream. Pour into a bowl and stir in the matzo meal. Next, cut the fish into pieces and mix in the food processor, making sure it is finely chopped but not paste. Add the fish to the eggs and matzo meal, mix well and keep covered in the refrigerator for 1/2 hour.

Shape the mixture into fist size balls with your hands wet, lower to the fish stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Cool, then take the balls out and arrange in a serving dish in one layer. Reduce the fish stock and strain it over the fish. Finally decorate with the carrot slices.

Leave to cool overnight in the refrigerator to let the jelly to form.