2015年9月24日 星期四
外來/請來食材
據考證，在先秦時期，吃頓飯是一件非常不容易的事情。
「裡邊請，請問客官是打尖還是住店？」
「打尖！來一碗蕃茄雞蛋麵。」
「那抱歉，客官，麵條要到宋朝才能成形呢。而且番茄是美洲貨，清朝末年才傳入中土。小店目前只有雞蛋，要不您點一個？」
「什麽鳥店！連碗麵都沒有，饅頭包子總有吧？上一屜！」
「這位爺，也沒有。饅頭包子得等到蜀漢諸葛丞相伐孟獲才有，抱歉了您呢。」
「擦！你們不會只供應白米飯吧？」
「抱歉，咱是在關中，水稻原產亞熱帶，得翻過秦嶺才能種，咱也沒有。」
「要死了！那就來個大俠套餐吧，二兩女兒紅，半斤熟牛肉……你捂我嘴幹嗎？」
「客官，小點聲！朝廷嚴禁私宰耕牛，被人告了可是充軍流放的大罪，萬萬不敢啊！」
「得得得，酒我也不喝了，茶水總有吧？」
「茶？那玩意兒到漢朝才有，哪怕到唐朝也是士大夫喝的，咱也不可能有。」
「幹！那就不吃飯了，上點水果吧。大熱天的，來半個西瓜。」
「呃，西瓜是非洲特產，要到南宋漢人才有種植……」
「沒有西瓜，蘋果總有吧？」
「真抱歉，蘋果十九世紀才從歐洲傳入我國。客官，您別點水果了，我可以負責任地告訴您，像什麽葡萄啦，芒果啦，石榴啦，草莓啦，鳳梨啦……您現在都吃不到。」
「你他娘的店裏到底有什麽？」
「粟米的窩窩餅，您蘸肉醬吃，我還可以給您上一份燙白菜。」
「敢情你開的是麻辣燙店啊？」
「瞧您說的，辣椒到明代才引進呢，我想開麻辣燙也開不成啊！」
「沒有辣椒，用大蒜代替也行。」
「真不好意思，大蒜的種子是西漢的張騫出使西域後帶回來的。小店只有花椒，只麻不辣。」
「那你們就不能炒個青菜？非要開水燙白菜？」
「客官您有所不知，鐵鍋到宋朝後期才能生產，所以沒法炒菜。況且炒菜要用菜油，菜油得等到明朝後期普遍種植油菜花以後才有。」
「好吧，其實你們可以用花生油……」
「花生可是美洲植物，哥倫布登陸新大陸以後才開始傳播。直到乾隆末年，花生都還十分罕見。」
「我靠你個x啊！那就來份燙白菜吧，多加點香菜。」
「嘿嘿，香菜原產地中海，張騫出使西域後……」
「去你大爺的！我真恨不能一黃瓜拍死你！」
「黃瓜？黃瓜原產印度，也是張騫出使西域帶回來的。」
「沒有黃瓜，我就用茄子捅死你！」
「嘻嘻，茄子來自東南亞，晉朝時傳入我國的，隋煬帝就特別愛吃……不但愛吃它，還愛玩它。」
「……」
「客官您還要什麽？」
「……」
「喂，客官……客官您別走啊！」
大陸原作者《潸沵》
2015年9月11日 星期五
2015年9月7日 星期一
Gefilte fish. Filter Fish BY OLIVER SACKS
Personal History SEPTEMBER 14, 2015 ISSUE
Filter Fish
At life’s end, rediscovering the joys of a childhood favorite.
BY OLIVER SACKS
Gefilte fish is not an everyday dish; it is to be eaten mainly on the Jewish Sabbath in Orthodox households, when cooking is not allowed. When I was growing up, my mother would take off from her surgical duties early on Friday afternoon and devote her time, before the coming of Shabbat, to preparing gefilte fish and other Sabbath dishes.
Our gefilte fish was basically carp, to which pike, whitefish, and sometimes perch or mullet would be added. (The fishmonger delivered the fish alive, swimming in a pail of water.) The fish had to be skinned, boned, and fed into a grinder—we had a massive metal grinder attached to the kitchen table, and my mother would sometimes let me turn the handle. She would then mix the ground fish with raw eggs, matzo meal, and pepper and sugar. (Litvak gefilte fish, I was told, used more pepper, which is how she made it—my father was a Litvak, born in Lithuania.)
My mother would fashion the mixture into balls about two inches in diameter—two to three pounds of fish would allow a dozen or more substantial fish balls—and then poach these gently with a few slices of carrot. As the gefilte fish cooled, a jelly of an extraordinarily delicate sort coalesced, and, as a child, I had a passion for the fish balls and their rich jelly, along with the obligatory khreyn(Yiddish for horseradish).
I thought I would never taste anything like my mother’s gefilte fish again, but in my forties I found a housekeeper, Helen Jones, with a veritable genius for cooking. Helen improvised everything, nothing was by the book, and, learning my tastes, she decided to try her hand at gefilte fish.
When she arrived each Thursday morning, we would set out for the Bronx to do some shopping together, our first stop being a fish shop on Lydig Avenue run by two Sicilian brothers who were as like as twins. The fishmongers were happy to give us carp, whitefish, and pike, but I had no idea how Helen, African-American, a good, churchgoing Christian, would manage with making such a Jewish delicacy. But her powers of improvisation were formidable, and she made magnificent gefilte fish (she called it “filter fish”), which, I had to acknowledge, was as good as my mother’s. Helen refined her filter fish each time she made it, and my friends and neighbors got a taste for it, too. So did Helen’s church friends; I loved to think of her fellow-Baptists gorging on gefilte fish at their church socials.
For my fiftieth birthday, in 1983, she made a gigantic bowl of it—enough for the fifty birthday guests. Among them was Bob Silvers, the editor of The New York Review of Books, who was so enamored of Helen’s gefilte fish that he wondered if she could make it for his entire staff.
When Helen died, after seventeen years of working for me, I mourned her deeply—and I lost my taste for gefilte fish. Commercially made, bottled gefilte fish, sold in supermarkets, I found detestable compared to Helen’s ambrosia.
But now, in what are (barring a miracle) my last weeks of life—so queasy that I am averse to almost every food, with difficulty swallowing anything except liquids or jellylike solids—I have rediscovered the joys of gefilte fish. I cannot eat more than two or three ounces at a time, but an aliquot of gefilte fish every waking hour nourishes me with much needed protein. (Gefilte-fish jelly, like calf’s-foot jelly, was always valued as an invalid’s food.)
Deliveries now arrive daily from one shop or another: Murray’s on Broadway, Russ & Daughters, Sable’s, Zabar’s, Barney Greengrass, the 2nd Ave Deli—they all make their own gefilte fish, and I like it all (though none compares to my mother’s or Helen’s).
While I have conscious memories of gefilte fish from about the age of four, I suspect that I acquired my taste for it even earlier, for, with its abundant, nutritious jelly, it was often given to infants in Orthodox households as they moved from baby foods to solid food. Gefilte fish will usher me out of this life, as it ushered me into it, eighty-two years ago. ♦
Gefilte fish (/ɡəˈfɪltə fɪʃ/; from Yiddish: געפֿילטע פֿיש, "stuffed fish", cognate with Germangefüllte Fische) is an Ashkenazi Jewish dish made from a poached mixture of ground deboned fish, such as carp, whitefish, or pike, which is typically eaten as an appetizer.
ゲフィルテ・フィッシュ
ゲフィルテ・フィッシュ（英: Gefilte fish, Гефилте(гефилтэ, гефильте) фиш, イディッシュ語 געפילטע פיש）というのは、ユダヤ教徒の伝統的な魚料理のひとつで、「詰め物をした魚」の意だが、魚肉のミートボールやつみれのような形に調理されることが多い。東欧系ユダヤ人には馴染みの深い料理であり、安息日の魚料理の定番でもある。
魚肉をすり身にし、調味料を加えて練ってから団子状に成形してタマネギやニンジンと共に茹でる。この時、すり身を完全な魚の元の形の中に詰めることがあるので、イディッシュ語で"gefilte"（ゲフィルテ - 詰め物をした）という名で呼ばれている。とっておいた魚の皮ですり身を包むこともある。フレイン（英語：chrain、イディッシュ語：כרײן）というホースラディッシュと甘酢のソースやテーブルビートを添えて供する。
安息日との関係は、安息日には労働をしてはならないというユダヤ教の習慣に由来する。この「労働」には魚の骨を取ったり、火を扱う行為が含まれるため、安息日に食べる魚料理には骨があってはならず、安息日が始まる前（金曜日の日没前）までに調理を済ませなくてはならない。このため、ゲフィルテ・フィッシュは普通冷たいまま、もしくは室温で食べる料理である。
ゲフィルテ・フィッシュは、ドイツ系やオーストリア・ハンガリー系ユダヤ人の間ではやや甘口だったり、ポーランド系・ウクライナ系・ロシア系のユダヤ人の間では塩や胡椒味で食べることがある。伝統的には、鯉やカワカマス、コクチマス（whitefish）のような値段の安い魚がよくゲフィルテ・フィッシュにされる。しかし、最近はタラなど他の白身魚を使ったり、鮭やマスのようなピンク色の身の魚も使ったりと、バリエーションがでてきている。
詰め物をすることをロシア語ではファルシローヴァチ фаршировать という。外部リンクの日本語ページには、カワカマスの詰め物（Щука фарширова
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