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.

Warm Salad of Salmon and Beets

A invited himself and G over one evening for an intimate Friday get-together. We dauntlessly addressed the issue by re-trying a recipe we had invented a few days before. The original version had tofu as its main ingredient but for A and G we tried something more elaborate, salmon. The result was even better.

(For 2 people)

Ingredients:

500 gr salmon fillet, cut into 1 inch cubes, fresh preferred...

1 beet root sliced into small cubes (about 1/2 inch)

1 medium onion, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 tbsp finely chopped ginger

dried chili (as much as you can handle)

1 tbsp finely sliced lemon grass (optional)

1 tsp sugar

1/4 cup soy sauce

3-4 tbsp lemon juice

black pepper

vegetable oil

1/2 cup chopped fresh coriander

1/2 cup chopped fresh green onion

The recipe:

To prepare the fish, fry it in a pan for a few minutes on each side with 1 tbsp oil, salt and pepper. Put aside for later.

In a shallow frying pan saute the onion, garlic, ginger, lemon grass and chili in 1-2 tbsp oil until the onion is clear. Careful not to burn the garlic.

Add the beets and let cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add black pepper, sugar and soy sauce. Stir well and cover.

Cook on low heat and continue to stir once in a while until the beets are soft (but not too mushy). Add the salmon and lemon juice, mix carefully not to break the salmon apart. Let cook for another 5 minutes and remove from heat.

Finally toss in your fresh herbs, again mixing carefully.

That's it! We served it with brown rice cooked with almonds and a salad on the side.

Cooking Again, Bangkok

Our last day in Thailand was well spend with a final cooking class conducted privately by Lee at "Cafe The Flow". We collected a list of our favorite street food dishes and presented it to her a few days before. Lee showed no hesitation. She immediately jumped into her research, asking endless family members and "hawkers" (food stall owners) and came up with a fantastic one day workshop of Thailand's best: Fish ball soup, Satay sauce, Khao Mun Kai (Chinese chicken), Khao Kiab Pak Moh (steamed dumplings), sticky rice with mango and fried bananas. Yum, yum and yum.

Noum Bai Chok by the Waterfront, Sihanoukville

Noum Bai Chok (not sure about the spelling), yet another yummy Cambodian dish that came straight our way as we were slurping our mango smoothies, is rice noodles and herbs in a fish curry soup. It's made on the spot by the trusted smiling vendor who wanders around the beach carrying all the products on her shoulders. First she piles a bowl with assorted fresh herbs: mint, banana blossom, green beans and others we could not identify.

Then, she adds a handful of fresh hand-made rice noodles and covers the lot with a hearty fish curry broth.

All that was left for us was to add the condiments of dried/fresh chili, salt and sugar to our liking. God bless.

A word of advice: the best food on Cambodian beaches is sold by these mobile vendors.

Cambodian Fish Products

The basic ingredient in Cambodian cooking is salty fermented fish paste. We happen to visit a factory that makes this staple in many varieties. The fish is cleaned, de-boned and thrown in a pile on the floor, where salt is added. The pile sits to ferment for two-three weeks. It is then chopped and transferred into large vats where it ferments even further. Different fish, seafood and spices make for different types of paste.

We cannot describe the smell that surrounds the village.


Close by, fish are sun-dried, smoked and sold in brick size bundles. Bits of dried fish can sometimes appear in cold salads or as a beer snack.