supply of fish, potatoes, salt, hardwood, 
and a big pot. At the logging camps, it 
was the ideal way to get dinner together 
for a mob of ravenous lumberjacks. 
Ostrand starts by building a large 
wood fire from logs of oak, maple, 
cherry, and beech. On a metal stand sits 
a twenty-two-gallon caldron filled with 
twenty gallons of lightly salted water. In 
that pot, Ostrand first cooks red Wis- 
consin potatoes. He lowers them into the 
water with a perforated metal basket 
Eve Hecht’s Gefilte Fish 
2 pounds whitefish 
2 pounds yellow pike 
1 pound carp 
3 medium onions 
4 tablespoons salt 
3 tablespoons sugar 
3 eggs, lightly beaten 
2 tablespoons matzo meal 
Pepper 
3-4 carrots, scraped and cut in rounds 
1. Have your fish man fillet the fish. 
Take the bones and fish heads with 
you. And try to get an extra head — it 
will improve the broth. 
2. Grind the fish with two of the onions, 
coarsely, in a meat grinder or a food 
processor. 
3. Transfer to a wooden bowl and con- 
tinue chopping with a mezzaluna (a 
half-moon-shaped chopper) as you 
work in two tablespoons salt, one 
tablespoon sugar, the eggs, the matzo 
meal, and enough water (about 14 
cup) to produce a smooth, light 
paste. Set aside. 
4. Put the fish heads and bones as well 
as the remaining salt, and sugar, pep- 
per, carrots, and the remaining onion 
(peeled and sliced) into a large pot of 
wide diameter. Cover these ingredi- 
ents generously with water and bring 
to a boil. In a separate pot, bring 
three quarts of water to a boil. 
5. When the first pot comes to a boil, 
begin making the fish balls. Keeping 
your hands moist with cold water, 
form spheres roughly the bulk of a 
jumbo egg (they will expand when 
cooked) and drop them, one by one, 
into the pot with the fish bones. The 
water should be kept at a slow sim- 
mer as you continue to add fish balls. 
When the paste has been completely 
used up, continue simmering for 
about 1 >/2 hours. Add additional boil- 
ing water from the second pot as 
necessary, so that there is enough to 
float the balls. 
whose handle will later permit him to 
extract the potatoes from the pot. In an 
evening, he will boil forty pounds of 
potatoes for eighty people, and eighty 
pounds of whitefish, cleaned and cut 
into thick steaks. The only trick is tim- 
ing. It takes just a few minutes to cook 
the fish. 
When it’s ready, Ostrand gingerly 
tosses a coffee can of kerosene into the 
fire, which surges up in twenty-foot 
flames. The conflagration is spectacu- 
6. Remove from heat and let the fish 
balls cool in cooking liquid. 
7. Remove the fish balls to a serving 
platter. 
8. Strain the cooking liquid. Pour it into 
ajar and refrigerate. It should gel. If 
it does not, rewarm the liquid and 
dissolve a package of gelatine into it. 
Test the sauce by putting a teaspoon 
of it on a saucer in the refrigerator: If 
the liquid does not gel, add more 
gelatine and continue until it does. 
Refrigerate. 
9. Serve fish balls with gelled fish aspic 
and horseradish. 
Yield: 8-10 servings 
Lamprey Bordelaise 
(Adapted from Raymond Oliver’s 
La Cuisine ) 
1 live 2-pound lamprey 
1 cup sauterne or other sweet white 
wine 
6 tablespoons olive oil 
8 leeks, cut into green and white parts, 
well washed, and sliced into 5-inch 
strips 
3 medium onions, peeled and chopped 
8 cloves garlic, minced 
4 shallots, minced 
2 carrots, scraped and diced 
4 celery hearts, sliced 
2 tablespoons flour 
3 cups dry red wine 
1 sprig parsley 
1 bay leaf 
!4 teaspoon dried thyme 
!4 pound smoked ham or prosciutto 
Black pepper 
Salt 
2 tablespoons butter 
14 cup Armagnac 
1 . Put the lamprey into a rough wooden 
box with no lid. Pour a slow stream of 
very hot but not boiling water over 
the lamprey, which will squirm and, 
in so doing, scrape off the film that 
covers its skin. Do not scald the lam- 
prey to death. As soon as it has been 
lar, but it also has a practical point. It 
makes the pot boil over, thus purifying 
the fish of any scum and oil that have 
come to the top of the pot during cook- 
ing. Then, out comes the fish, ready to 
be eaten in one of the greatest fast-food 
banquets ever devised. 
Raymond Sokolov’s new book, Fading 
Feasts (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), is a 
collection of food columns that first 
appeared in Natural History. 
doused on all sides, pour on cold 
water to revive it and scrape off any 
remaining film with a knife. 
2. Tie a string around the lamprey’s 
neck and suspend it from a hook over 
a saucepan containing the sauterne. 
Cut off six inches of the lamprey’s 
tail (reserving this piece) and let the 
fish bleed into the wine, stirring con- 
stantly until the bleeding is complete 
and the mixture is well blended. 
3. Make several vertical incisions just 
below the cartilaginous backbone 
and pull it out in one piece. Cut off 
the head and discard. Cut the body 
into six or eight even slices. Remove 
the gut and discard. 
4. Marinate the pieces in the blood- 
wine mixture for three hours. 
5. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. 
6. Heat four tablespoons of the oil in a 
saucepan and cook the onion, garlic, 
shallot, carrot, celery, and the green 
parts of the leek until soft. Stir in the 
flour, cook for one minute, and add 
the reserved tail, the red wine, pars- 
ley, bay leaf, thyme, ham, pepper, 
and a little salt. Bring to a boil, cover, 
and cook in oven for two hours. 
7. Add lamprey and its marinade to the 
mixture from step 6, stirring con- 
stantly as you bring it to the boil on 
top of stove. Reduce heat and sim- 
mer for five minutes. Remove lam- 
prey pieces and set aside. Discard the 
tail. 
8. Cover the saucepan and return to 
oven for seven hours. • 
9. Heat the remaining oil in a saucepan 
with the butter and cook the white 
parts of the leeks until golden. Add 
lamprey slices and Armagnac. 
Flame. Strain the sauce over the fish 
and stir carefully so that fish pieces 
don’t break. 
10. Cover saucepan and simmer over 
lowest possible heat for one hour, or 
less if the fish pieces seem about to 
break up. Serve with boiled potatoes 
and croutons. 
Yield: 4 servings 
96 
