Main Ingredients:

See below ingredients and instructions of the recipe

Cooking Preparation of the Recipe:

------------------------------------FISH------------------------------------
2 Carrots 2 t Salt
2 Celery stalks 6 C Water
1 Parsley root 2 lb Fish fillets
1 Onion, quartered -(carp, sole, pike
5 Peppercorns -or similar fillets)
1 Bay leaf

-----------------------------------SAUCE-----------------------------------
3 T Butter 1/4 t Salt
3 T Flour 2/3 C Sour cream
3/4 C Horseradish, prepared, 2 Eggs, hard-cooked,
-cream-style -peeled and sieved
1 t Sugar

Combine vegetables, dry seasonings and water in a saucepan or pot. Bring
to a boil; simmer 20 minutes, then strain.

Cook fish in the strained vegetable stock 6 to 10 minutes, or until fish
flakes easily. Remove fish from stock. Arrange on serving platter and
cover with plastic wrap. Chill. Strain fish stock and reserve 3/4 cup for
horseradish sauce; cool.

For horseradish sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan, then blend in flour
until smooth, making what the French would call a roux. Add the cooked
fish stock gradually, stirring constantly. Cook and stir until the sauce
boils and becomes thick and smooth.

Remove from heat and stir in horseradish, sugar, salt, sour cream and eggs.
Cool for 15 minutes. Pour the horseradish sauce over the chilled fish and
garnish with shredded lettuce.

NOTES:

* Fish in horseradish sauce -- This recipe is the first of the 12 dishes
that make up the traditional Polish Christmas-eve meal, which is eaten
after sundown on Christmas eve. The Polish word for Christmas eve is
Wigilia (pronounced VI-gee-lee-ah). Its root is like the English vigil:
waiting for Christ to be born. At the end of the Wigilia meal the family
goes off to midnight mass at church.

There are usually 12 dishes in a Wigilia meal to symbolize the 12 apostles,
though some families serve 13 because they include Christ in their count.
The meal starts when the first star can be seen; this symbolizes the star
of Bethlehem. Although The Wigilia is meatless (Advent, the season of
penance, continues until midnight), it is still festive and delicious. The
tradition of Wigilia, though centuries old, is still current in Poland.
There is no fixed set of rules for what the 12 (or 13) dishes must be; the
items in the meal change somewhat according to location and availability of
ingredients.

Nevertheless, all of the dishes are traditional, and in addition there are
many traditions for the serving of the meal. For example, some people
place straw under the tablecloth to symbolize the manger in which Christ
was born. Most families set an extra place, for the stranger who might be
passing by. This is my family's traditional Wigilia meal:

: Fish in horseradish sauce
: Pike Polish style
: Pickled beets
: Pickled herring in sour cream
: Stewed sauerkraut with mushrooms
: Christmas eve kutia
: Almond soup
: Noodles with poppy seed and raisins
: Poppy-seed rolls
: Christmas bread
: Baked apples with red wine
: Marzipan
: 12-fruit compote

With this first recipe you will notice a similarity with my last name. Now
you know a word of Polish (namely chrzan = horseradish i.e. hot stuff).

: Difficulty: moderate.
: Time: 1 hour.
: Precision: approximate measurement OK. Experiment.

: Original recipe passed down through the generations and translated from
Polish into English (with a few mods) by Edward Chrzanowski
: MFCF, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
: echrzanowski#watmath.waterloo.edu or
{ihnp4,allegra,utzoo}!watmath!echrzanowski

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