Jellied fish is a traditional holiday dish. A jellied stuffed fish is also a very unusual dish. The minimum content of small seeds in the pike perch makes this fish ideal for stuffing, and besides, this process is not very laborious.
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Cooking stuffed fish only seems complicated. In fact, it is worth trying once to cook stuffed pike perch and it will become clear that everything is very simple. And to make a broth for pouring is absolutely a trifle.
To prepare stuffed carcass you will need:
- one pike perch (2 kg);
- onions - 2 pieces;
- 2 eggs;
- ghee - 100 g;
- White bread;
- milk;
- salt;
- ground black pepper;
- sugar.
To make fish jelly you will need:
- onions in husks - 3-4 pieces;
- husk;
- peeled carrots - 5-6 pieces;
- salt;
- black pepper peas;
- Bay leaf;
- gelatin - 1 tbsp.
First of all, zander must be cut: cut off the head, fins, tail, cut the abdomen and remove the insides. Then you need to remove the skin from the fish. To do this, you need a long, sharp knife. Pike perch should be placed with the cut abdomen down on a cutting board. Press it firmly with your left hand in the place where the head was cut off, insert a knife between the skin and meat in the area of the ridge and start cutting the skin down to the board. You need to do this carefully, gradually move the knife deeper into the depths.
It is not necessary to ensure that the skin is perfectly clean. If necessary, you can cut off excess meat from it later. First, the skin should be removed from the sides. After that, both halves of the skin must be lifted up, connected to each other and finally cut off from the ridge. This is the most crucial moment. The skin in this place must never be damaged.
Then you need to separate the meat from the bones. To do this, you need to make an incision deep into the ridge along a line that seems to be specially “drawn” on the sides of the fish. After this, the dorsal part is cut off from the ridge, and the abdominal part is separated from the costal bones.
Now you need to cook the stuffing. For this, all meat cut from the seeds must be passed through a meat grinder along with two onions and two slices of white bread soaked in milk. In the minced meat, you need to drive 2 eggs, pour 100 grams of ghee, pour 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar and add black pepper. Mix everything thoroughly until smooth.
In the center of the skin laid out on the table, you need to lay out all the minced meat. After this, the abdomen must be sutured with either culinary or ordinary thick thread. The stuffed carcass should be wrapped either in gauze or parchment paper, so that when cooking there is no tearing of the skin and the fish does not lose shape.
If there is more minced meat, you can make meatballs, cook them together with stuffed fish and use them for aspic.
At the bottom of the pan you need to put the fins, tail, head and ridge. Pure onion husks are poured on top, onions, bay leaves, peas of black pepper are cut into 4 parts. There you need to put carrots, part of which should be cut into circles - in the future they will be used for decoration. In addition, 100 grams of ghee should be poured into the pan and sprinkled with approximately 3 incomplete teaspoons of salt (it depends on your taste). From above it is necessary to lay the prepared zander, seam down.
It is necessary to pour cold water into the pan so that it just covers the fish and put the container on fire. The water must be brought to a boil, make a minimum fire and leave to cook the stuffed pike perch for 1.5-2 hours.
After this, the fish must be removed from the broth, remove gauze from it, remove the threads and let it cool completely. The broth should be filtered through gauze, folded 2-3 times. In it should be added either 1 tablespoon of instant gelatin, or gelatin, previously soaked in cold water (1 tablespoon in 1 glass of water).
Stuffing zander is possible and not only in its entirety. Fish can be cut into portions, meat can be cut from each, leaving the bones and ridge attached to the skin. In the resulting holes and you need to put the stuffing.
The cooled fish must be cut into portions and put in a deep, preferably transparent dish, in which the aspic will be served on the table. You can decorate pike perch with slices of boiled carrots, lemon, parsley leaves. Pour all this into the broth and let it harden.
Beautifully decorated jellied stuffed pike perch will become a real decoration of the festive table!