Cured Herring Maki

The family anecdote goes that my mother had a craving for fried herring in parsley sauce when expecting me; this dish translated in Danish is Sild med Persille Sauce which seem to have influenced in the picking a name for me. Pernille is my official name, my parents wanted to name me Le, but the priest did not allow this, so Pernille became the compromise. I cannot recall once either of my parents calling me by my official name - it very quickly became Sille. I did an alteration to my name after a period working as a housekeeper at Sheraton Belgravia; my the boss, a quintessential English matron were bellowing ‘silly’ down the corridors whenever she wanted my attention. I figured if I was going to reside in the UK I needed to fix this and opted for an ‘a’ at the end of my name instead of an ‘e’. This is how a girl called Sild became Silla.

I love herring and these are big part of my heritage, but also an important part of European gastronomic and social economic history. Back in 2015 I spend some excellent days in search of the perfect pickled herring from Bornholm, the likely birthplace for the Danish pickled herring with the MSC and The Guardian.

Herring is used in Japanese cuisine, but mostly in a soba broths called Nishin Soba and air dried version originating from a traditional herring fishery in the Hokkaido region. Curing the herring is the same step by step guide as in my mackerel tutorial, but I recommend asking the fishmonger to scale and fillet the herring for you as they will do this in a flash. I recommend curing the herring immediately when returning home for the best result.

Makes 4 maki rolls, 32 pieces in total

400 grams of sushi rice (1/2 a portion)

4 x 4/5 nori sheets

50 grams chives

200 grams rocket leaves

60 grams micro herbs

1 cucumber

2 freshly filleted herring

40 grams sea salt

4 cm piece of konbu

10 ml. soy sauce

200 ml. sushi vinegar

Serve with pickled ginger, soy sauce and wasabi.

Salt, rinse and cure the herring like in the mackerel tutorial in above link, but reduce the salting and curing to 15 minutes period. Remove herring from the marinate, place flesh side facing down on kitchen towel and leave to rest in the fridge.

Wash, rest, cook and mix sushi rice following recipe here.

Wash rocket and chives, leave to rest on a colander. Cut the cucumber in half on its length using one half. Cut in 4 long sticks and remove the seeds.

For the herring prepare them for the sushi making by placing fillet flesh side down in the chopping board. Starting on the top of the fillet peel of the outer skin and pull off - a little like pulling of an band aid. Remove the bones; first trim of the row on the side of the fillet and thereafter trim fillet on either side of the middle row.

To make the maki roll spread 100 grams of sus hi rice across a sheet of nori leaving a tap of 1 centimetre uncovered at the top and an overhang of sushi rice of 1 centimetre at the bottom. Spread 1/4 quarter of the micro cress across the rice and flick sheet over. Place 1/4 of the chives in the middle of the nori, followed by cucumber, rocket and herring. Build up the filling so that you have an overhang either end of the roll, cut the roll in 8 pieces. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients and serve with soy sauce, pickled ginger and wasabi.