The Carp in the Bathtub by Barbara Cohen

This is actually pretty accurate when it comes to Jewish grandmas and their recipes. That is, until Mama murders the carp and turns it into gefilte fish. The carp lives in the bathtub for a week and one year gets adopted as a pet by the author as a little girl. In this book a young Jewish girl tells the story of how her mother brings a live carp home every year the week before Passover in order to make the best and freshest gefilte fish in the neighborhood, for which she is justifiably famous throughout Jewish New York circa 1920 something. It starts with the book The Carp in the Bathtub And all us Jewish kids are indoctrinated into that stuff early. It was amazing.īut the thing about gefilte fish from scratch is there’s a lot of lore around it. My next door neighbor, who was my surrogate grandma (I had both my actual Grandmas growing up, but they lived in Florida), made it. Homemade gefilte fish is truly wonderful. Best of my knowledge the only difference is that the cat food was not blessed by a Rabbi.Īs a kid I ate homemade gefilte fish. And the canned cat food that my cat gets has no fish in it. I can confirm that it smells like canned cat food. It tastes like what I imagine fish flavored Little Friskies tastes like. The label is predictive and was put on there proactively.īut on the upside, it was blessed by a Rabbi.Īnyhow… This stuff is truly nasty. But my suspicion is that the broth wasn’t jellied when they put the fish in there. I also have truly no idea how long that stuff has been sitting in that jar, or how long that jar has been sitting on that shelf. I truly have no idea how the broth gets “jellied”.

Because mostly here in Madison WI we could only get this stuff: Holding seders for many years here where I was one of very few Jews greatly outnumbered by my goyishe friends, gefilte fish became a right of passage. I can’t say – I’ve never eaten lutefisk (that shit is scary.

Living in Wisconsin for the past 33 (ish) years, where the Norwegians greatly outnumber the Jews, I’ve frequently heard gefilte fish described as Jewish lutefisk. The most polarizing food item in the Jewish culture (except perhaps tchollent, but since I wasn’t raised Orthodox I never ate tchollent). Matzah ball soup, brisket, fresh grated horseradish, fried matzah, matzah kugel, charroset, the list goes on, and it’s all wonderful.

Passover is my favorite holiday, both in terms of the ritual, and the food. Note that there will be some narrative ahead of this recipe this time.

The Carp in the Bathtub by Barbara Cohen