Friendship, faith and gefilte fish for Passover


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SALT LAKE CITY —A week or two before Passover, Vivian Dowsett starts calling her friends to let them know it is Gefilte fish time.

For the last 16 years, Dowsett, Deborah Milan-Niler and Fran Lapin have gathered to make the dish their mothers and grandmothers used to make.

“Gefilte means stuffed,” explained Dowsett. “My sense is that years ago our mothers and grandmothers used to stuff the fish to stretch the dollar.”

“My husband’s grandmother used to make Gefilte fish, but the refrigeration wasn’t that good back then. So she used to buy the whole carp, and they would keep it in the bathtub for several days and then they would club it,” Lapin recounted.

These women have been perfecting their own recipe for years.

“We have experimented with so many fish but we’ve come up with is a combination of tilapia and trout,” Lapin said.

The women said their friend Claudia Silver-Huff knew how to make the best batch. She passed away from cancer in 2005, and her friends keep up the Gefilte fish tradition in her honor. “It is one of those things that is important to us,” Milan-Niler said. “We know Claudia is still with us in spirit.”

The combination of fish is chopped up with lots of ingredients including parsley, eggs, sugar, kosher salt, pepper and matzo meal.

“We aren’t supposed to eat leaven products because of the exodus from Egypt and no time to let bread rise,” Lapin explained.

Claudia Silver-Huff
Claudia Silver-Huff

The eight-day festival of Passover commemorates the liberation of the Jewish people. The festival begins with a Seder feast.

“Seder means order and the beautiful thing about Passover or Pesah is that it is done in the home,” Dowsett said. “Judaism is a lot about foods and tastes and smells and symbolism particularly at Passover.”

Gefilte fish is not a dish required at Seder, but it is usually served with fresh horseradish sauce, which represents the bitterness of slavery and it is mixed with parsley which represents rebirth.

“Seder to me represents family and carrying on tradition,” Milan-Niler said.

She remembers as a child it was a special time for her family because it was the only time her uncle would talk about his escape from a Nazi concentration camp.

“The reason why was we were celebrating personal freedom and it was an honor and a privilege and a gift that my uncle was alive,” Milan-Niler said.

All the women believe it is important to pass on their Passover traditions to their children.

“It is a refreshing time and I don’t think if it wasn’t for Passover my kitchen would get as clean as it does,” said Dowsett.

The women say they prepare for Passover weeks in advance and use different dishes for the Seder meal. Seder customs include telling the Passover story, discussing it, drinking four cups of wine and partaking of symbolic foods.

“At the very end, the last step is you always say next year in Jerusalem, which is very persons’ hope to celebrate next year in Jerusalem,” Lapin said.

If they aren’t in Jerusalem, these women will most likely be back in Dowsett’s kitchen making their beloved Gefilte fish.

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