2/18/2024 0 Comments Jewish gefilte fishAs Ina Garten taught me long ago, “You know, store-bought is just fine.” Meals hosted with ease and calm tend to inspire a similar environment, and the more I host, the more I value finding a balance between manageable and ambitious. The other reason I serve smoked fish at Rosh Hashanah is perhaps obvious: It’s easy. I make vegetarians a separate plate of vegetables or salad so that they can easily join in. My goal is aways to balance out the unmistakable waft of the ocean mixed with burnt wood with the brightness of a crunchy vegetable, a tart currant, a tangy cornichon or a squeeze of citrus. Sometimes I make a bed of matchstick-cut fennel, apple and celery slaw other times, the fish is surrounded by thinly sliced cucumbers, lemon wedges and tufts of dill fronds. Whatever I choose, I serve the fish as the first course, alongside fresh accompaniments that can hold up to the forthright smokiness. Michael’s fish comes in more varieties than I could dream of: classic, peppered, pastrami, maple, Old Irish and more. I head to the Portland farmers’ market where I stop by The Smokery’s fish stand, run by Michael Jacobs, a kind-eyed Irish Jewish immigrant. When I host, I like to pick out three or four varieties of cured fish. You can find delicately flavored Nova cold-smoked lox, but you’ll more readily find thick peppercorn-crusted pieces of hot-smoked salmon, maple-kissed glossy salmon candy and buttery, tender smoked West Coast sablefish. Here, smoked and cured fish come in ample forms. I was born and now reside in the Pacific Northwest. One year it occurred to me, ‘Why not honor the tradition of serving fish with a crowd-pleaser?’ Photo credit Sonya Sanford In my experience, the appreciation of lox and smoked fish has consistently outweighed the love for traditional gefilte fish. While it’s rarely possible to satisfy each and every person’s unique dietary preferences, I strive to make the meal as enjoyable as possible for all who attend, and I also uphold the tradition of serving fish. Often, we gather outdoors in the warmth of the last days of summer, and my sprawling picnic table fills up with guests from a wide range of backgrounds and ethnicities. As I began hosting High Holiday meals, it became our custom to invite a large group of friends and family, and to include anyone that needs a place to go. Served with a fierce beet horseradish (aka chrain), my intergenerational Ashkenazi taste buds are always satisfied by gefilte.īut as any avid host knows, not everyone shares a love for ground fish patties - whether they come out of a jar of mysterious jelly or are painstakingly homemade. Maybe, like me, you fell in love with updated gefilte fish recipes, like the one from “The Gefilte Manifesto,” by Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz. Maybe you grew up in a family where a platter of fish heads was served at your High Holiday table, one for each person or maybe your family’s tradition was to serve chraime or the kind of gefilte fish that comes pre-made in a jar or frozen in a thick tube, simmered in water, and later sliced and served.
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