My paternal grandmother, Bobe, used to make two kinds of gefilte fish every Friday: white or traditional and red or a la Veracruzana<\/i>. The moment you sat down, she made you choose, \u201cwhich do you want mamele,<\/i> white or red?\u201d<\/p>\n
Invariably, after you chose, she\u2019d ask, \u201cyou don\u2019t like the way I make the other one?\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019d barge in, make room on your plate and serve you the kind you hadn\u2019t picked, right next to the one you had chosen. She\u2019d wait for you to taste it and tell her how good the one you hadn\u2019t chosen was. Then, she would eat right off your plate.<\/p>\n
Having come from tiny shtetls <\/i>in the polish countryside, both her and my grandfather arrived in Mexico so very young. Mexico gave them an opportunity to start a life away from pogroms.<\/p>\n
They worked hard and made a simple but good life for themselves. Though they were humble, and without much savings, every Friday they had a bountiful table full of food for their three grown children and their families \u2013 all together there were ten granddaughters. Nope. Not a single grandson!<\/p>\n
Mexico also brought so many flavors to Bobe\u2019s traditional foods. At the table there was petchah<\/i> (chicken foot jelly!) that could be garnished with a salsa verde<\/a> cruda, gribenes<\/i> (chicken cracklings) tucked into warm corn tortillas<\/a> and a heaping spoonful of fresh guacamole<\/a>, the crispiest potato kugel<\/i>, a stew that always had falling apart meat and a soupy prune or carrot tzimes<\/i>. To finish, it was her prized chocolate babka<\/i> spiked with Mexican canela<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet, nothing beat her Mexican-style gefilte fish, aka<\/i> the red one.<\/p>\n The red is different from the white in so many ways. The white, or traditional, is made by combining ground fish filets, white onion, carrots, eggs and matzo meal and shaping them into patties that are poached in a stock made with the head, tail, and bones of the fish. It is refrigerated, covered with this same fish stock, which turns gelatinous as it cools (a delicacy if you have the acquired taste!). It is served cold. The red has the same fish mixture, but it is poached in a thick and spiced up tomato sauce enriched with capers, green olives and mild pickled peppers. It is served hot. Everyone in my family is wild about it.<\/p>\n