Fish Soup Part III

I forgot to set my alarm. I woke up around eleven o’clock and was too lazy to cook anything myself. My mom was home, being a teacher she had the summer off like I did. I found her upstairs folding laundry in the living room. There was some kind of soap opera playing on T.V.

“Mom, I’m hungry.” I whined, placing emphasis on the wavering hungry tone I had been working on since I was three, “Mom, cook me something.”

“You’re old enough to feed yourself,” she said without looking up from her laundry, “There’s plenty of food in the kitchen. What do you want? There’s cereal, bagels, hot pockets, soup, sandwich meat…”

“But that’s all boring stuff. It’s lunch time, why don’t you make some Kalla Mojakka? Bud and Hannah would probably eat some.”

“Kalla Mojakka is your dad’s thing,” She said, “Besides, your brother and sister both went out earlier when you were sleeping.”

I let out an exasperated sigh and went to make myself a sandwich. I noticed the metal bowl in the fridge with a plastic bag of fish fillets inside. It was probably being saved for dinner. I grabbed what was left of the deli turkey, about two slices, and made a sandwich with a slice of white bread folded in half. I took it with me downstairs and munched on it while I chilled on the couch. There was an Andromeda marathon on the Sci Fi channel and it kept me occupied until my dad got home from work at around four o’clock.

While I waited I tried to avoid thinking about the swift approach of the school year. In only two more weeks I would be going away to college for the first time. It had been ages since I had last eaten Kalla Mojakka, almost a year, and I was determined to have some before I left. Only my dad really knew how to make it. It was a family recipe he had learned from his grandma Hannah, daughter of a finish immigrant and my sister’s namesake. I doubted if my mother even knew how to make it. Every time I asked her to cook some she would say “that’s your dad’s thing,” and she was never in the kitchen when he cooked it. I don’t really know why I wanted to have some before I left so badly. Sure it was tasty, but I wasn’t sure that was the real reason.

I heard the slamming of the front door that announced my dad’s arrival home from work.

“Hey Hel,” he called, “get up here!”

I always wondered what would happen if he used the shortened version of my name in public. Would it give people the wrong impression of me? I’ve never had to find out so I guess it doesn’t really matter. I always forgot to mention it to my dad anyway.

“What do you want?” I said as I entered the kitchen where my dad was busy pulling potatoes out of the lower cupboard.

“I need you to grab some newspaper and lay it out on the table,” he said, “Then grab a knife and help me peel these potatoes.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I said so that’s why. How else do you expect to learn the fine art of Kalla Mojakka?”

“Wait, you mean I get to help make it?” My dad had never let anyone help him make Kalla Mojakka before.

“Not if you just stand around doing nothing,” he said, “go grab some newspaper.”

Shaking my head in disbelief I went into the living room and grabbed some papers from the bottom of the coffee table stack. After spreading them out on the kitchen table I took a seat opposite my dad. He handed me a paring knife and I took a potato from the pile and began to peel. I soon remembered why I hated peeling potatoes. I just wasn’t any good at it. By the time I finished my first one, my dad had already peeled two and started on his third. Each peeled potato was cut into pieces and placed in a large cooking pot he’d placed in the middle on the table.

When all the potatoes were peeled I took the pot over to the sink and under my dad’s instructions filled it with enough water to cover the potatoes by two inches. While we waited for the potatoes to boil my dad told me about Grandma Hannah and her husband Nillo.

“I remember this one time when I went over there, Nillo sent me over to his neighbor Ed’s cabin to learn a new fish cleaning technique. Because they were getting old, Grandpa and Grandma were having trouble chewing fish with all the bones still in it. Ed taught me how to fillet fish and take out the bones. I was so excited I ran back to the dock where Nillo and I had kept a stringer of fish we had caught. I went into the boat house and cleaned those fish up just the way Ed had showed me. When I was almost done Nillo came in. He looked at the plate of fillets, and he looked at the pile of scraps in the bucket, and then he shook his head. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or disappointed.”

My dad took a break from the story to pull some baby carrots out of the fridge. He handed me a bowl and we cut them in half before adding them to the pot.

“So what happened to the fish?” I asked, “Did Nillo change his mind after he’d eaten some?”

“I don’t know.” My dad said, “But it’s a funny story. Later, Grandma Hannah decided to make Kalla Mojakka. I was all excited because she’d used the fish I had just cleaned. After we said our prayers I picked up a spoonful of soup and though ‘oh boy, this is going to be great! No bones!’ I took a big old bite and nearly skewered my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Turns out Nillo couldn’t bear to see so many scraps go to waste. He’d gone back and picked them over for extra things to put in the soup.”

I enjoyed listening to my dad tell stories. Even though I’d heard it before it still made me laugh. It also made me glad that my dad wasn’t as hung up on not wasting scraps as his depression era grandparents had been. I heard horror stories at school about kids whose grandparents actually used the entire fish’s head in Kalla Mojakka. No way would I eat a fish head, not matter how tasty they said it was.

When the potatoes were half done my dad told me to get a can of condensed milk from the pantry, a can of corn, and a can opener. While I did that he was busy getting some spices from the cupboard and some pre-chopped onions and celery from the fridge. We added the vegetables and soon the potatoes were almost done. Half the can of condensed milk went into the pot as well as all the juice in the can of corn. The corn starch would make the broth thicker, like a chowder or a stew, my dad explained. “If we didn’t have canned corn we could do the same thing with flour and water,” he said. Next he showed me the spices from the cupboard, salt, pepper, and allspice.

“There are no measurements in this recipe,” he said, “It’s all a matter of interpretation and taste.” He took a pinch of this and that began throwing them into the pot. “You just keep adding until it tastes right, like this.”

He lifted the stirring spoon from the pot and handed it to me. I blew on it and slurped the broth. It was delicious. My dad brought the fish out of the fridge and cut it up into chunks that I threw into the pot. Already the smell was permeating the house, making my mouth water.

When the fish was all added we brought the pot to a boil and immediately shut off the heat. The Kalla Mojakka was done. I knew I would never be able to write down the exact recipe. I knew how it was done, what it was supposed to taste like, but everything was subjective. I guess that’s the big secret. You can know what goes into a thing but it’s how you put them together that makes it work.

My dad pulled some bowls out of the cupboard and handed one to me. He scooped portions of Kalla Mojakka into our bowls and we sat down at the table to eat. I could see the chunks of potato, carrot, and fish floating in the white broth. The smell alone made me want to go back for seconds. I raised a large spoonful of steaming fish soup to my lips and smiled as it hit my tongue.

It wasn’t so much the taste of the soup that made me smile as it was the fact that my dad had finally chosen to share the secret family recipe with me, not my sister, not my brother, but me. I realized that what I had really wanted all along was the chance to do something special with my dad. This was the best going away to college present I could have asked for. Though I must admit, the mini fridge was nice too.