Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [94]
Soft herring roes make a good filling for an omelette. Fry them gently in butter, season with lemon and parsley and use as a filling. Or else cook them gently in butter, chop them and add them to the beaten eggs before making the omelette in the usual way. For a dozen eggs, allow 250 g (8 oz) of soft roes.
ROE PUFFS
If you cannot find roes in good shape, an enjoyable, if second-best, solution is to make soft roe puffs. Buy 250 g (8 oz) of roes. Chop them into a rough purée and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Make up the batter above, but with rather less liquid: 150 ml (5 fl oz) will be enough. Mix the soft roes into the batter before folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot, deep oil. Remove when they are crisp and golden brown. Keep warm in the oven until the batter is used up. Serve with mustard sauce, or with lemon quarters.
SOFT ROE AND CREAM SAUCE See p. 186.
SOFT ROE PASTE
Like the smoked salmon pastes on p. 324, this makes a good first course. Serve with brown bread and butter, or with baked bread.
Fry 125 g (4 oz) of soft roes in a little butter. Season well and sieve or mash to a paste. Mix in 90 g (3 oz) of softened, unsalted butter, and 1 tablespoon of double cream. Taste, and add more salt and pepper if necessary, and a little lemon juice to sharpen the flavour. Cayenne pepper can also be used to spice this very smooth and delicate mixture, or a few drops of chilli sauce.
SOFT ROE STUFFING
soft roes
60 g (2 oz) white breadcrumbs
milk
1 medium onion, chopped
60 g (2 oz) butter
heaped tablespoon chopped fresh herbs: parsley and chives or tarragon
grated rind of ½ lemon
1 teaspoon anchovy essence or 2 anchovy fillets chopped
salt, pepper, lemon juice
Chop the soft roes. Soak the breadcrumbs in a little milk, then squeeze out any surplus liquid. Sweat the onion in butter until soft and golden. Mix in all other ingredients, seasoning to taste.
SALTED, SMOKED AND PICKLED HERRING
If wind-dried fish (p. 494) were suited to early nomadic life, salted fish indicates a settled pattern of existence; a pattern of hamlets, of fishing, and fishing communities where people were skilled enough to catch quantities of fish at a time. And had storage space, and adequate containers for salting down the catch to last the winter. It also indicates the developed working of salt mines and salt pans, which took place from the seventh century BC onwards. I suppose a tub of salted fish is as much a symbol of civilization as a gold torque.
Barrels of salt herring must have been excessively cumbersome to move about. Obviously, drying them by smoking would solve the problem of getting them inland, to people who for health – and for religious reasons – needed a particularly cheap and abundant form of protein. Gradually a most efficient technique was evolved. Salted herring were smoked, then left to drip for two days, before being smoked and smoked again. They hung over slow fires – like row upon row of washing in Venetian alleys – suspended from rods in great smoke houses. The resulting dryish red object, the ‘red herring’, was then able to stand up to changes of humidity and temperature without going bad: and it was tough enough to survive the rough jolting of ancient transport.
THE RED HERRING This even had its poet, Thomas Nashe, Shakespeare’s contemporary. According to him: ‘The poorer sort make it three parts of their sustenance; with it, for his dinner, the patchedest Leather pilche laborattro may dine like a Spanish Duke… it sets a-work thousands, who live all the rest of the year gaily well by what in some few weeks they scratch up then’ – i.e. in the herring season. ‘Carpenters, shipwrights, makers of lines, ropes and cables, dressers of hemp, spinners of thread, and net weavers it gives their handfuls to, set up so many salt houses to make salt, and salt upon salt; keeps in earnings the cooper, brewer, the baker, and numbers of other people to gill, wash and pack it, and carry it and recarry it.