Family Passover recipes

Karen Waldman’s maternal grandmother, Edith Benner, made gefilte fish every year for Passover at her home in Milwaukee, Wis.

“She made it the non-Polish style, so it was not too sweet. We called it salt-and-pepper gefilte fish,” said Waldman, of Bethel.

Benner, or “Double Bubbe,” as Waldman called her, lived five minutes away from Waldman, in Milwaukee. She lived to be 97.

“She was a short, tiny, little, round, smiley, bubbly lady,” Waldman said.

One day, when Waldman was in high school, she and her mother thought it was a good idea for Benner to teach them her recipe, so they could pass it down to future generations.

When they told her this, she happily agreed. However, there was one complication — the recipe was never written down.

“She told us that the only way we can learn it is if we come over her house and take notes while watching her make it,” Waldman said.

So the three generations of women spent an afternoon together in Benner’s kitchen.

“I remember sitting there at the kitchen table. We had a notebook by our side,” Waldman said. “My mother made me write everything down because I had good handwriting.”

As Benner was making the gefilte fish, she was measuring for the first time.

“They were rough measurements,” Waldman said. “We watched and helped her.”

She said what makes her grandmother’s recipe unique is that most gefilte fish recipes call

for matzo meal but her grandmother’s doesn’t.

Benner cooked well into her 80s. Eventually, Waldman’s mother started to make the gefilte fish recipe. Now, Waldman makes it for her own family.

She said she thinks of her “Double Bubbe” whenever she does.

While Waldman no longer has the notebook, she now has the recipe on a traditional recipe card.

She makes it slightly different that her grandmother did. “She used to have the fish ground right at the fish market,” Waldman said. “I grind my own.”

She hasn’t taught the recipe to her three children — yet. “I hope to teach it to Sam [her oldest

child]. He loves to cook and is good at it,” Waldman said. “He teaches a cooking class in Hartford for JTConnect (Jewish Teen Connect).”

Every Passover, Waldman orders about eight pounds of whole fish, which serves 18 to 20 people. Double Bubbe’s recipe is alive and well.

Growing up in Shreveport, La., Bonnie Wunsch has very early memories of a giant wooden bowl her mother had, which was “over a foot large.”

She remembers sitting in the kitchen, taking turns with her sister and brother with a doublebladed hand chopper, chopping the apples for the charoset.

“We set up a breakfast room table and chopped it,” she said.