OK - I have been cooking a lot of herring recently, but one thing I overlooked was the roe.
Most people throw it away, but doing so is a waste as you buy fish by weight and it is delicious.
When you clean the fish, the females have two large roes, or egg sac's, in the abdominal cavity. They are a dark red - like the colour of liver. They are worth keeping, as this makes a great breakfast treat or starter.
Males have white, fatty looking sacs for Milt (thanks to Mellor from boards.ie for that one) in the same area.
These are not to be used for this recipe.
Had it yesterday as a starter, but forgot to take photo's so I will update the blog in the future.
INGREDIENTS
500g herring roe
2 tbsp plain flour
sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
50g Cuinneog butter
1 tsp lemon juice
A few drops of Tabasco sauce
A good pinch of paparika
2 slices wholewheat toast, liberally buttered with even more Cuinneog
Method:
Place the roes in a colander or sieve and pour boiling water over the top.
Dry with kitchen paper.
Season the flour with salt and freshly-ground black pepper - Use a fair bit.
Toss the roes in the flour before and set aside .
Melt the butter in a pan and when foaming add the roes along with the lemon juice and Tabasco sauce and fry for between three and five minutes, or until dry, almost crispy.
In the meantime prepare the toast. Butter it generously.
Cut into triangles, then spoon the cooked roes onto the toast.
I like to sprinkle over some mild, finely sliced sliced shallots.
Garnish with a pinch of paprika and serve with a little dressed salad.
For something that normally ends up in the bin - or in my case the cat's - it's a great snacky meal that takes about 10 minutes to prep, cook and serve up.
Again, being in Holland visiting, I go back to the old North Sea / Baltic staple.
This is basically a Scandinavian dish adapted for more Irish style ingredients. In Sweden, this dish would most likely use dill for example.
I remember one conversation when I was told that had history been a little different Irish cuisine would be more like that found in Scandinavia, Iceland and Holland. I suppose this has some basis in that our growing conditions are closer to them than to the Mediterranean regions, with things like oats, spelt and pulses. There has been a move towards this type of cuisine, particularly with NOMA in Copenhagen.
I feel also the type of food cooked in Normandy has particular reference to Ireland, with a lot of dairy, fruit and shellfish. It is renowned for its rich butter and cream sauces - and for its apples, cider, and Calvados, an apple brandy much used in local cooking. Normandy, with its climate and history is not so different.
One thing we love with our fish is the sharp tang of citrus like lemon, so the buttermilk and mustard sauce gives that flavour. Quite common in Poland, Russia and Northern Germany - where a lot of Ashkenazi Jews lived the same combo of oily fish and a sharp taste was achieved using soured cream and chives, a dish I'll cover in the future.
This is a simple dish, get the potatoes down when you turn on the oven to pre-heat, add the beans over the spuds in a steamer about 5 minutes from plating up.
Takes about 25 - 30 minutes to cook if the fish are prepped in advance.
Baking the fish is important in this dish, as it gives a dry texture to the flesh, it suits the sauce better.
ingredients (serves 2)
4 large herrings, cooking oil
for the sauce
3 tbsp (1 1/2 oz) 40 g Cuinneog butter
30 g (about a 1/4 teacup (1 oz)) plain flour
300 ml (1/2 pint) Cuinneog buttermilk
1 tablespoon Dijon wholegrain mustard
salt and freshly ground black pepper
* Some sugar or honey on standby (see note)
parsley and lemon wedges, for garnish
method
1. Heat the oven to 200°C (400 F) gas mark 6 and butter a deep ovenproof dish. Remove the heads from the fish, clean, gut, scale and bone them. Rinse and pat dry.
2. Slash the skins diagonally with a sharp knife two or three times on each side. Brush with a little oil. Put the herrings in the dish, cover and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, until the flesh is no longer pinky.
3. Meanwhile, make the sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour and cook for a minute. Gradually blend in the milk, stirring. Add the mustard and bring to the boil slowly, stirring until thickened.
Season to taste.
* While tasting, if you find the sauce too sharp add sugar or honey to sweeten slightly
4. Serve the herrings with the sauce poured over, I plated up with some baked new potatoes and buttered green beans.
Combining two items which formed a staple of the Scottish crofters diet over many centuries, herring coated in oatmeal is a traditional, tasty, nourishing dish rich in Omega Oils. These two ingredients would have also been staples in Connemara, although I don't think they were used together in this part of the world. Herring is an under-rated fish, sustainable, healthy commonly available and economical.
Catching them on a small scale can be hard, as net caught is a lot easier than line caught which is very tricky as they feed mostly on plankton throught their lives.
Herring are a wonderful fish, and are a major part of North West European heritage.
Sill is what herring are called in Scandanavian countries. In Russia, pickled herring is called Silodka.
In Holland in particular, herring has always been very important, in some ways Herring built Holland.
They love small herring served raw with diced fresh onions - and I love it in a white bread roll.
In the seventeenth century, the Dutch herring fisheries in the North Sea were considered the most sophisticated and demanding fishing operations in the world. From the income generated in exporting herring accross Europe the Dutch generated income that went into sailing technology that created their golden age.
In historical terms, herring can perhaps be considered the most important commercial fishery in the world.
The Dutch began to build ships which resulted in Holland becoming a seafaring power. The trade of herring eventually led to the Dutch empire through exploitation and later colonialization.
Without the money and technological development built on the Herring fisheries, there would have been no Dutch East Indies company, no Java coffee - The Dutch were the first to import coffee on a large scale, and they were among the first to defy the Arab prohibition on the exportation of plants or unroasted seeds when Pieter van den Broecke smuggled seedlings from Mocha, Yemen, into Europe in 1616. The Dutch later grew the crop in Java and Ceylon.
Without this trade there would have been no golden era to generate the money to allow the Duch Masters like Claesz, Vermeer, Rembrant et al to create paintings that we all know and love today, and without that artistic foundation it is doubtful if we would still be enthralled by Van Gough.
Still-Life with Herring, 1636, Oil on Panel, 36 x 46 cm, Museum Bijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
Painted in 1636 by Dutch artist Pieter Claesz (1597-1660), 36 x 46 cm, Oil on Panel, Museum Bijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
Herring are also one of the more environmentally responsible fish
This quick and easy meal is without doubt one of the simplest and tastiest meals to cook, great with salad and soda bread or new potatos later in the year. If you are lucky enough to have them, mashed jeruselem artichokes are great with this dish
Ingredients:
Allow 2 herrings per person
Rolled Oats - unsweetend like Flahavans porrage oatlets.
Salt and pepper
Knob of butter
Method:
Cut along the underside of the herring, lay it on a table, cut side down and hit across the backbone in a few places with a rolling pin or your hand.
Remove the backbone and as many of the smaller bones as possible.
Scrape the scales from the fish with a knife, remove heads and tails.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper and either toss them in a plastic bag with plenty of rolled oats or put the fish on a plate and coat them with oatmeal - you may have to press the oats into the fish to ensure it is fully covered.
Put a knob of butter in the pan - cooking oil or dripping also work - put them in with the skin side upwards first.
Fry until lightly brown, turn and cook the other side. It should take 5/7 minutes.
Drain the fish on kitchen paper (paper towels).
I'd suggest serving with lemon and parsley - old Scots would not have known such refinements!
Please feel free to copy, paste and adapt this page to support FISHFIGHT.NET
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LOGO/NAME OF YOUR LOCAL SHOP/GROUP
SUSTAINABLE LOCAL FISH
HERRING
Scadán
(Clupea harengus)
(F) Hareng (D) Hering (NL) Haring (E) Arenque
The trade in herring is an important sector of many national economies. In Europe the fish has been called the "silver of the sea", and its trade has been so significant to many countries that it has been regarded as the most commercially important fishery in history.
In Devon and Cornwall they are called Silver Darlings. Herring are highly prized for flavour and nutrition.
In the past Herring would have been a healthy and popular staple. They are particularly popular in the Netherlands. Herring is also a staple food in Germany, Belgium and Scandinavia.
Preserved and pickled they are found throughout Eastern Europe. Kippers are smoked Herring. Environmental Information
Atlantic Herring (Clupea harengus) are one of the most environmentally responsible fish. It is one of the most abundant fish species on earth.
They can grow up to 45 centimeters (17.7 in) in length and weigh more than 0.5 kilograms (1 lb). They feed on copepods, krill and small fish, while their natural predators are seals, whales, cod and other larger fish.
North Atlantic herring schools have been measured up to 4 cubic kilometres (0.96 cu mi) in size, containing an estimated 4 billion fish. Nutritional Information
Herring are very high in the long-chain Omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA.
They are a good source of vitamin D.
50% of fish caught in the North Sea are thrown back dead - this wasteful practice is called discard.
To end this practice You can be a part of a campaign called Fish Fight.
I would urge You to visit the site - WWW.FISHFIGHT.NET- and get informed and involved.
By supporting this campaign, your name will be added to a letter to be sent to Commissioner Maria Damanaki, members of the Common Fisheries Policy Reform Group, and all MEPs
I am not a great fan of the current cult of celeb's that seem to dominate our airwaves and newspapers.
However, there are those who do some great work in raising issues that civil servants and politicians like to brush under the carpet. Most notable perhaps was Bob Geldof when he arranged LiveAid all those years ago.
Recently Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a celeb cook and broadcaster in the UK started a very admirable campaign to reform fisheries policy in the EU.
The campaign is called Fish Fight, and I support it. I would urge readers of this blog to visit the site - fishfight.net- and get informed and involved.
I admire the campaign he has started
There is also a facebook page you can join to support the campaign -
Due to EU policy, determined by unelected and unaccountable EU bureaucrats we have the obscene situation where half the fish caught at sea are dumped.
There should be a greater moral outrage that perfectly good food is being wasted, and the bizarre practice means animals are needlessly and pointlessly killed, this when there are hungry and undernourished people in our own societies
For my part I have produced information sheets for some local butchers, with fish info on one side and a range of recipes on the other, to encourage people to use a wider range of fish.
Herring, Mackerel and Pollack are locally caught Connemara fish and are as good as cod or haddock and onthis blog I have posted info on al three types.
Any person who runs a business that sells fish - like a butchers - or who knows a local shop that sells fish is free to copy, download, adapt and reproduce any of the info posted on the 19th on this blog.
If you have a local store who you know, copy and print these off for them to display, its easy to do and who knows - you might get some free fish for your efforts!
I would suggest these fact sheets go on one side of an A4 sheet, and a recipe is put on the reverse side.
I will be posting some fish recipes in the near future.
