First, decide which fish your ear will be prepared from - one breed or several. The main thing is the richness of the soup and the yellow color. Gray ear, although tasty, but it looks unappetizing. The best tradition is to cook a double ear: from large and small fish. But you can venture on a triple. An important rule: a real ear is brewed from a predatory fish and in no way from a herbivore. Exception can be considered burbot, but it should be used only as a component, but not as a basis.
So, in order to properly prepare the ear of bekh bones, take a pike or pike perch about 1.5 kg in weight. Ideally, if you have fresh fish. If not, the frozen one will also come down. Remember that fish for cooking soup is used all (!) Except for the eyes (and categorically) and the gills.
Until the first softness, defrost the fish. To do this, place it in a sink filled with cold water for 15 minutes. Fish water does not hurt until it is cleaned of mucus. Take a knife about 25 cm long with a sharp tip.
Cut off the head, doing this on both sides at an angle of 45 degrees, slipping the knife under the head fin. The knife must reach the base of the cranial bone of the fish (sorry for inappropriate surgery), while trying to cut the spinal bone.
Then you need to remove the gills and eyes from your head. With gills, be careful, since the pike has very sharp spike bones. Secure yourself, you can by taking an old linen napkin. The head is ready for cooking.
Slice your belly, throw not all the insides. Leave for the soup the liver and milk or caviar. Especially careful with the liver burbot - it is the main decoration in your ear.
Sharp with the tip of the knife dorsal, anal and pelvic fins. It will do the right thing on weight! Then separate the fillets from the spine and ribs. Ridge with tail and ribs (this is all a single piece), fins and head put in a pan. Then place the skin with which you previously cut the fillets. A very important point - scales from the skin to clean it is not necessary in any case! Scales give your ear a special richness! This implies that the fish was previously well washed from the mucus under a stream of cold water.
You can start cooking soup.
Everything lying in a saucepan, rinse thoroughly in cold water, as the leftover blood will hopelessly stir up your broth. Fill the contents with 3 liters of cold water and put on a fire. After boiling, foam should not be removed! Slow down the fire and cook for another 40-50 minutes.
At this time, cut the remaining fillets into slices about 2 cm wide, like a herring. All this pepper with freshly ground black pepper, salt, pour the juice of 2 halves of lemon and sprinkle with parsley. Thoroughly mix the pieces and, pressing it down with a lid, place it in the freezer.
Now brush 2-3 carrots larger and 3 large bulbs. In the presence of clean and crumble 2-3 roots of parsley, celery or parsnip. Carrot and 2 onions cut into small cubes. The last bulb grind or cut very finely. All vegetables, except the last bulb, pass with roots, stirring, on low heat for 10 minutes, then adding 3 bay leaves, 10 peas of black pepper and 4 fragrant. After lapse of half an hour from the beginning of the boil of the broth, remove from the walls of the pan the remains of foam and add the grated bulb.
Now peel and cut 5 potatoes into cubes. Gone 40-50 minutes, the skin and bones prepared. Strain the broth in another pan through a colander, covered with gauze. The mass left in the gauze wring out. In this mass there is one small, but the most delicious and valuable thing in the whole fish is the cheek. For your information, at the court of Catherine II, the ear was the highest delicacy from the herring cheeks! All the rest was given to the yard.
If the broth turned muddy, it's not all lost! Take the egg whites, thoroughly beat minutes 3, adding 50 ml of ice water or, better, ice crumbs. Then pour the resulting mass into the cooled broth, mix and boil again. After cooling, pour it into the first pan, leaving a residue in the form of protein flakes and other impurities.
So, we have properly cooked clean, rich and unsalted broth. It must be salted only 5 minutes before the end of cooking, so that the ear does not become turbid again. Put the broth again on the fire and pour the potatoes as soon as it boils. Perform any further manipulation with a small boil. Cook the ear was left no more than 15-17 minutes. 5 minutes after boiling potatoes, add spiced vegetables. Remove the fillets, mix well and add to broth 7 minutes before cooked. After that, add to the fire for a minute, and then turn it down again.
Now rub in the mortar (or saucepan with high walls) caviar or milk with a liver, adding ch.lozhku (without top) salt and a bunch of finely chopped green onions. If there is no green, replace it with a small onion bulb. Rapidly grind the pestle or spoon to a homogeneous mass, pour into the ear.
Finally, pour finely chopped parsley, 4-5 slices of lemon without skin and pepper.
That's how we prepared the ear without pits right! Bon Appetit!