[dropcap]I’m[/dropcap] on the hunt for a good, old school and heimish gefilte fish recipe. I know, I know. These days, the kosher culinary world is all about the cutting edge sophisticated kosher interpretations of popular contemporary foods.

For me, though, the charm of holiday foods, and especially Pesach foods, is in the sentiment of nostalgic, traditional foods of childhood and Pesachs past.

At this point, I should probably let you know that I don’t really like gefilte fish.

I mean, I don’t really care for the current popular version of gefilte fish. There was a time when I loved gefilte fish. When I was little, my mother poached homemade deboned gefilte fish dumplings that were delicious. Then, one day it all stopped. We moved from Israel, the “Old Country,” to the new, more modern one, America, where you didn’t have to spend hours making food from scratch.

As my family was transitioning between Israel and settling into Denver, we had moved into my grandmother Miriam Goldberg’s home for nine months.

Well, what do you know. That jarred Manischewitz gefilte fish swimming in sticky translucent jelly — she thought it was delicious! She had the house supplied with it in abundance (I won’t get into how I coped with the nightly salmon dinners).

In the sixth grade, moving countries, cultures, languages — it wasn’t easy. But adjusting from homemade simmered gefilte dumplings to that jarred stuff? That may have just been the hardest part of the whole move.

[dropcap]Like[/dropcap] tall and round looking shtreimels, the hot Yerushalmi Kugel of Jerusalem; charred crisp black on the outside and creamy caramel-y noodles on the inside, this was the stuff of my Jerusalem Shabbat kiddushes. Contrast this with Denver in the 1980s; yes, there were those weeks of sponsored kiddushes with the most scrumptious version of cholent out there, but many Shabbatot when it was the Old School basics: Tam Tam crackers, raw onion-y herring, egg kichel and petite meatball size gefilte fish balls.

Even though, like the bigger version of purchased oval gefilte fish that came from that jar of jelly, somehow, to my mind, these mini fish dumplings served with the elegance of an hors d’oeuvre, stabbed with slim, adorned toothpicks, seemed less fishy and more adorable. All in all, delicious. You could just pop them into your mouth, accompanied, of course, by the hot strong condiment of gefilte fish’s partner in crime: chrain, or horseradish.

This was before the sweetened Meal Mart chrain had made its debut.

This pinkish-magenta stained horseradish, it was strong. For a second, you could feel a sharpness, your nostrils on fire.

But then the frozen gefilte fish in paper craze took over, and it seemed the good old days of tasty gefilte fish were over forever.

Secretly, if the jarred gefilte fish patties were rinsed of their gel, I was even beginning to prefer that to the paper-wrapped fish.

This year I decided, enough is enough. Time to reclaim the art of true home made gefilte fish making.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] don’t mean there will be a live carp swimming in my bathtub. Nor will I be stuffing the actual skin of a whole fish.

I’ll settle for purchasing already ground whitefish, pike and carp.

Not hailing from a Galicianer background, I will carry on my combined Litvak and Hungarian heritage, sweetening the fish judiciously; that is, just barely.

I’ll poach them in water, in a stock of carrots, celery, fish bones and fish heads, onions and lemon slices.

While the fish is poaching away, I will concentrate on grating the chrain. The goal: make it as horseradish-y as possible.

One of my father’s roles in seder preparation has always been grinding the horseradish root for maror. He indoctrinated us early in the ways of this condiment. After crying over a bowl of grated horseradish root, his nose as red as a flame, he would seal the stuff as tightly as possible so as to guarantee that the strength of the horseradish wouldn’t fade one bit. Upon unsealing the maror package, the fumes alone had sinus clearing powers. It’s the hottest horseradish around.

In that spirit, I will sprinkle some vinegar, sugar and salt into the freshly grated horseradish. There will be some beets. But not too much of anything other than the root itself, so as not to mask the nostrils-on-fire quality of the chrain.

Tradition is tradition.

Besides, it’s a good dosage of oomph with which to smother the more gently poached and sometimes underwhelming flavored gefilte fish.

Now I just need to actually find that perfect tried and true homemade gefilte fish recipe.