Fishy-Stories;
I was planning a dinner party and decided to make it 'fishy'; called my fishmonger and ordered 2 fresh salmon fillets; I needed 10 portions, so I thought this would be 'safe'...I send my son to pick it up and got this phone call: "mom, the fish is huge...do you really need 25 portions of fish?"...THIS, has never happened to me in Israel; you order, and whatever it is you ordered, you get, AND, you pay for it! To be told that I ordered too much?...boggles the mind; it really does! Anyway, I told my son to tell the fishmonger to give me 10 large potions; they turned out to be so huge, that I had to cut off the thin part of each fillet, and even after that operation, each of us had an enormous portion of fish...which everybody enjoyed very much and there were no left overs...I made it smothered in garlic mayo and rolled in crushed pecans...( column 27)...baked for 15-20 minutes... perfect! I served it on spinach; I had two large bags of it, frozen... defrosted, I squeezed out all the water and left it on the sieve to drip some more...crushed mushroom stems with 4 cloves of garlic went into the pot with hot olive oil...spinach, goes in next, salt, pepper, mix-mix, add goat cheese...quite a lot of it...cover, leave on a low flame and let it all melt together, then mix well, and it becomes so delicious, that it would make Popeye turn up for dinner...

The parts of fish which I cut off, I boiled for ONE minute in water, white wine vinegar, bay leaves, pepper corns...you know, we did it before...after one minute of boiling, leave it to cool; the best way to poach ANY fish...I flopped it into a plastic dish, and into the freezer it went...one night we had nothing special to eat, so out came the fish, was defrosted, and fishy cakes were made...actually, its all there in Column 29...and I made a sauce to go over the fish cakes, it is in the same column...and crushed broccoli mixed with Parmesan cheese went under the fishy cakes...another perfect dinner.

SO: you think this is the end of the 'Fishy-Story'?...but no! There were two fishy cakes left over and nobody wanted them...AND, you know, that I can not throw out food...SO: the next day, into a bowl they went, with one can of tuna, a small chopped onion, some chopped pickle and mayo, salt, pepper...mix-mix; sliced tomatoes, toasted pita...a perfect salad for a perfect lunch.... Now: let me tell you about 'Life-in-Israel': You-all know that on Yom Atzmaut, our Independence Day, we have a fishy-brunch; it's been going on for close to 40 years...we started it with four friends...baked our own bagels...they were not available then...we insisted, got it too hard the first year...too eggy the second, but by the third year, we became expert 'bagel-machers'! We had no smoked salmon then, just that dreadful red-stuff, they called "lox"...but, it satisfied our longing for the real thing...and: yes, I made cream cheese as well...the one they had here, was...not!

Times have changed; we now have great smoked-salmon, perfect bagels, and whatever one desires, is available; and we continue on Yom Atzmaut, with our brunch; the L&M makes his famous Wicked-Marries and I?...I, do the rest. Anyway: because I buy a specific type of smoked salmon and a large amount, I usually, order it way ahead of time...so, I went to put my order in, and the Russian dragon looked at me and said: "why not take it now"?...I told her that I need it for the 8th...she took a package out, and said: "this is good till the 24th...you take now. Better in your fridge then in mine...you may not get it from 'mine'"...she laughed, "somebody else will"...I took the salmon. "What else", she wanted to know..."I need 20 fillets of herring, but I will come back next week" said I..."Next week?" She was shocked; " don't you know that herring is much better made a week in advance?"...as I really had to agree with her, I took the herring..."and, what else?" she wanted to know...'I need 'makruska' said I, "but I do not see any here"..."how much" the dragon wanted to know...going into the back and coming out with a huge box of the stuff..."June 2nd, is on the bag, how much?" I took the 'makruska'...she wanted to know what I was going to do with it...I told her...she wanted the recipe, I gave it to her...she told me what to add, and what not to put in...and off I went in total dither...45 years in this country, and I am still flamfoxed....AND: when I called the bagel-place to order the bagels, which I usually put into the freezer...the lovely girl at the other end of the line asked me for when do I needed this amount of bagels... when I told her, she suggested that maybe they should deliver the bagels a day before?...DELIVERED!?...my mind went blank...but she promised, and, yes they were! Cut, and packaged the way I asked them to be...and so, as you see, 'Life-in-Israel' continues to shock and delight all of us living here. Eh...most of us?...

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Debbie Morgenstern is the author of "My Life in Israel" and other short stories.
http://www.trafford.com/robots/04-0655.html

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