Fish with Lemon Egg Sauce
A traditional recipe for the end of a fast.
The long-awaited meal to break the fast after Yom Kippur is often spent with friends and family. After a day filled with prayer and abstinence, your break fast meal should be prepared and ready to heat and eat; this is not a time to spend hours in the kitchen.
It is traditional in Ashkenazic communities to break the fast with a dairy or pareve meal, while Sephardic communities often break the fast with a small dairy snack and then later partake of a full meat meal. Both traditions include sweet food, such as honey or jams, reminiscent of the sweetness of life and the new Year. The break fast meal also often includes eggs, a symbol of life and rebirth.
The three dishes in this break fast menu combine these traditions, and can all be prepared in advance.
Use your favorite kind of fish (such as cod, halibut, snapper, or bass) in this recipe for Fish with Lemon-Egg Sauce, a traditional Sephardic dish reminiscent of Greek cooking.
The Apple-Pear-Cranberry Kugel features the best of fall produce in a twist on a traditional sweet kugel.
Ingredients
chopped parsley for garnish
juice of 1 1/2 lemons
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons cornstarch
4 fish steaks or fillets, or a whole side of fish for a crowd
salt and pepper
2 celery stalks, sliced diagonally
2 bay leaves
1 carrot, sliced diagonally
1 onion, sliced
Directions
Place the onion, carrot, celery, and bay leaves in a wide, shallow pan.
Pour 3 cups of water, or enough to eventually cover the fish, into the pan. Add a dash of salt and pepper, and simmer on medium-low heat for about 10-15 minutes. Place the fish in the pan and simmer on low heat for another 10-15 minutes.
Turn off the heat, and ladle off about 1 3/4 cups of the water into a smaller sauce pan, to create a stock. Make a paste with the cornstarch and a bit of cold water in a separate small bowl, and add it to the separated stock. Bring to a boil.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, and stir in the lemon and sugar. Add a few spoonfuls of the stock to the egg mixture to prevent the eggs from curdling, then pour the whole egg/lemon mixture into the hot stock while stirring. Stir until the sauce thickens a bit, but do not let it come to a boil.
Remove the fish from the pan. Remove the bay leaves and garnish with the carrots, celery, and parsley, and pour the sauce over it.
Serve hot or at room temperature.
pareve
Pronounced: PAHRV or pah-REV, Origin: Hebrew, an adjective to describe a food or dish that is neither meat nor dairy. (Kosher laws prohibit serving meat and dairy together.)
Sephardic
Pronounced: seh-FAR-dik, Origin: Hebrew, describing Jews descending from the Jews of Spain.
