Jewish Cuisine

More recipes from SBS Food

All Jewish Recipes

Key Ingredient
Egg
Fish
Onion

Food Category
Seafood

Cuisine Category
Jewish

Gefilte fish

Cuisine: Jewish Servings: Serves about 12 people Created by Rita Erlich

A popular mainstay in Ashkenazi Jewish cooking, Gefilte Fish are poached fish patties or balls made from a mixture of de-boned, ground fish. Literally, ‘stuffed fish’ – Gefilite fish used to be a way of making this perishable last a little longer. The fish meat was taken out, minced, mixed with other ingredients (such as eggs, spices, onions and carrots) then stuffed back in the skin and baked.

Ingredients

1kg (or so) mixed fish fillets (flathead, snapper, dory, salmon or ocean trout)
3 large brown skinned onions
2 slices ginger
6 eggs (3 hard boiled and 3 raw)
1 dessertspoon sugar
Salt, white pepper
60g ground almonds
1 carrot sliced in rounds.

Stock
Fish skins and bones
1 carrot
1 onion, sliced
1 leek
Slice of ginger
4-5 cups of water

View Conversion table

Preparation

Stock
In a large pot, place fish skins and bones, carrot, onion, leek, ginger and 4-5 cups of water. Allow to come to the boil and simmer for 40 minutes. Then strain the liquid and toss the solids away.

For the Fish Patties
Boil 2 of the peeled and quartered onions with three eggs for about 15 mins. Allow to cool.

Make sure there are no bones or skin in the fish fillets. Mince, or pulse through the food processor with the onions and hard boiled eggs.

In a large bowl, beat the raw eggs with the ground almonds, one by one. Season with sugar, salt and pepper. If you need to soften the mixture slightly, add a little chilled water. Allow 10 minutes mixing time – the better the mixing, the lighter the fish. Place in fridge for 10 minutes to keep cool and set.

Add a little salt, mix then and form into round patties.

In a pot, prepare a bed of sliced onions and a couple of slices of ginger. Place the patties in the pot (packed in a single layer but quite tightly on top of the onions and ginger). On each pattie, place one carrot slice.

Carefully pour in the fish stock (about half to three-quarters of the way up, don’t cover the cakes). Gently bring to a simmer and cook for 40 minutes.

The fish should be pale. Allow the patties to cool in the pan, then gently lift out. Put into wide shallow dish. Strain the liquid, and pour over the fish. Cover with plastic wrap and keep in fridge until needed. The liquid should set into a light jelly.

Serve with grated horseradish.

Jewish Restaurants

Displaying 4 of 4 Jewish Restaurants.

Restaurant		Suburb
1.	Moroccan Feast	Randwick
2.	Twenty One	Double Bay
3.	Thomas Street Grocery	Hampton
4.	Botticelli of Brighton	Brighton

02 Nov 2010 05:44 AEST

Michael

Dover Heights

Beetroot/Horseradish "Chrain" (ch as in loch)

It's just minced horseradish root and beetroot with added vinegar - possibly some salt. It's much easier to buy it from the shop though in Albany WA this may not be the case. In Sydney/Melbourne you can buy it with/without the beetroot. Wasabi tastes - and affects you - in almost the same way as horseradish - eating gefilte fish with green wasabi instead of red horseradish delivers the same effect and would be yet another aculturation - Jewish cuisine taking on the shape of its surroundings.

30 Oct 2010 02:15 AEST

Elizabeth

Albany WA

Beetroot/horseradish

On the program the Gefilte fish was served with beetroot and horseradish but the recipe is not provided. Does anyone have a recipe? Many thanks.

20 Aug 2009 09:36 AEST

Mark

South Australia

Fried is Better

Boiled Gefilte fish is nice, but fried is way way better - a totally different experience.

08 Feb 2009 01:49 AEST

Ann Singer

Toorak

Best Yet Gefilte Fish Recipe - most are not great!

Nicer than the usual recipes as it has a bit more complexity of flavour with the addition of ginger and the more interesting fish stock for the poaching liquid

Comment on this recipe

PLEASE NOTE: All submitted comments become the property of SBS. We reserve the right to edit and/or amend submitted comments. HTML tags other than paragraph, line break, bold or italics will be removed from your comment.