Gefilte fish cakes
Servings: 12 fish cakes
There’s no yiddishe dish(e) that sparks more of a visceral reaction in gentiles than gefilte fish – and nothing that gladdens a yiddishe’s kishkes more (except maybe chopped liver – which, ironically, is made of kishkes too). My Babushka Zina always made her gefilte fish the old-school way by boiling the shiitake out of it, and then crowning it with a conciliatory mushy carrot. Slathered with horseradish and wrapped in the glow of naches emanating from her watching us devour it, rendered this dish unmissable every Passover. Traditionally made with inexpensive and readily accessible white fish such as carp, some recipes also branch out into a pink-fish version using salmon, but most stick to the boiling bit pretty vehemently. That’s why I’m expecting some broigus with this rendition, which is fishy-funk free, and kinda cheating… but if there’s anything we’ve learnt from MasterChef Australia, it’s that everything tastes better fried. Consider this the Gateway to Gefilte: all the flavour of bubba’s fish balls, with the satisfying crunch of fish fritter!
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Ingredients
- ½ cup coarse matzah meal
- 1 brown onion (or 3 spring onions) roughly chopped
- ¾ bunch chives roughly chopped
- 1 tbsp grapeseed/rice bran oil plus extra for frying
- 1 chicken-style stock cube
- ½ bunch dill leaves
- 2 eggs
- 700 g firm-fleshed white fish (such as monkfish or cod) roughly cubed
- 1½ tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt flakes
- ½ tsp ground pepper
- ½ cup coarse matzah meal or more if needed for crumbing
- Horseradish to serve
Instructions
- Add your ½ cup of coarse matzah meal to the food process and blitz to a finer crumb. Set aside. Pop onion, chives, oil, eggs and chicken stock cube together in the food processor, blitz to a smooth puree. Add fish cubes and pulse until combined (pulsing helps keep the texture mildly chunky rather than soupy).
- Combine the blitzed matzah meal, sugar, salt and pepper together, then pop into the processor and pulse through the fish mix a couple of times to incorporate.
- Scoop your mix into a bowl, give it another stir about, then cover and refrigerate for at least half an hour (this can be done the morning of your fish fritter feast, or even the night before).
- When ready to fry, heat some oil in a heavy-bottomed pan on low-medium heat.
- Set up your station with a bowl of warm water (to keep your hands from getting too sticky) and your ½ cup of coarse matzah meal on a flat plate. Scoop two tablespoons of mix into your moistened hands, shape into a patty, then coat with the coarse matzah meal.
- Fry on both sides until golden brown (around 2-3 minutes a side)
- Allow to drain on a cooling rack over a baking tray, sprinkling some salt flakes on top.
- Garnish with fresh horseradish (if you have any) or the jarred stuff – my favourite is the beet-horseradish for colour contrast.
Notes
Tips: A Yiddish lexicon for you
Yiddishe: this is Yiddish for ‘Jewish’, and is usually used to affectionately to describe people and things – like the classic song popularised by the Barry Sisters, ‘My Yiddishe Momme’.
Dish(e): not a Yiddish word, but I figure that tacking on an “eh” to the end of any word (preferably with an upwards inflection) is to writing, what adding schmaltz is to cooking.
Kishkes: Yiddish for guts (both physically and figuratively).
Babushka/Bubba: Grandma.
Naches: Yiddish for the warm glow of pride you get from something, most likely from your children, or your children’s children, or your children’s children’s children. Tphu tphu tphu.
Broigus: Yiddish for a “bitter dispute”, according to Wikipedia. It usually involves family, and ends in somebody guilting somebody else into doing something they would otherwise not want to do (like put differences aside for Passover Seder… you could call it “applying a #gefilter”).
