Soused herrings - moments

5 days ago

"Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever?" Jennifer Donnelly

I remember. I was a child. We were staying in a guest house on the sea front in Exmouth, Devon and there had been soused herrings for breakfast, which we children hated. There were lots left over and so we were allowed to cross the road and throw the herrings into the air for the seagulls, who would swoop down and catch them in mid- air. I still remember vividly the beauty and the magic, the wonder of them being able to do that.

I found this picture online of the Esplanade in Exmouth taken in the same era - the end of the 40s, beginning of the 50s perhaps. We would have stayed in one of those places facing the beach - maybe the tallest one. It wasn't a posh hotel but a guest house, which I think was owned by the friend of one of my aunts. A Fawlty Towers kind of place. There are a few other memories associated with these holidays -

Getting up in the dark to travel in our little Morris Minor so that we could avoid the massive traffic jams around Basingstoke and Exmouth - so slow moving you could have a picnic at the side of the road whilst you waited. Getting up so early helped with Basingstoke a bit, but not Exmouth. But I do remember the mysterious excitement of driving through a world which was asleep.

Spending hours in the rock pools looking for tiny crustaceans and fish, bucket in hand, in the pools at the end of this beach at Orcombe Point, where the cliffs came down to the sea. And look there is a Punch and Judy show which I don't remember - well I remember one in Portsmouth but not here. Was there one I wonder, and if so, why don't I remember that?

They were happy times, although doubtless with their moments of friction. Of course I could say that these are invented memories, particularly the seagulls, but I do seriously remember the wind blowing and the seagulls hovering, and standing by that wall as we enthusiastically tossed the herrings into the air as they swooped, and later in the day sitting on the beach in our awful swimming costumes. Me on the right. Although that memory, of course, comes from a photograph.

Considering that a life is filled with moments like these, why is it I wonder that just one of those moments is so fixed in my head and not all of the others which may indeed have been more significant?

"There are moments that have a certain flavor of eternity" Marc Levy

This moment in time came to me this morning as I was reading my current book - The Future Future by Adam Thirwell - an author I did not know but who was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, last year- a prize:

"to reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form."

I have no idea why the book made me think of those seagulls and the soused herrings as the book bears no relation to such an experience, but obviously my brain made some kind of connection. Why? I do admit that this particular memory comes to me from time to time. It's one of those moments to which my memory returns every now and then, not because of a pictorial hint. But mysteriously every now and then it is there. And why now?

This book is mysterious too. I have not quite finished it and so it may all be resolved when I do. On the cover of my version Salman Rushdie is quoted as saying: "Unlike anything else you'll read this (or any other) year." Which is so very true. The title is possibly ironic in that it is set in the past and yet implies it is about the future.

Theoretically it is a historical novel about a young woman at the time of the French Revolution, but it is written in a style that somehow confuses you as to when you are. It is almost as if you are simultaneously in the now and the then. Although everything is seen and experienced by the central character who is acquainted with figures such as Beaumarchais, Jacob, even Marie Antoinette, who is referred to as Antoinette, she speaks, somehow, like a modern person. Things happen that surely could not have happened then, even whilst things happen that could only have happened then - such as duels. It is a very weird sensation and not an easy read. Two or three times now I have nearly given up, but now I am so deep into it that I shall finish no matter what. Maybe it's because of Colm Toíbin's "tiny details that give delight". Like this description of heat:

"There was only heat. Think of an afternoon when it's so hot that no one's even moving in the swimming pools, and to walk across to the pool pavilion is too giant an endeavour because the air feels thick and burning..."

I also read this this morning and it immediately brought to mind stop-offs in Dubai, where the temperature was over 40 degrees and where it was indeed an effort to walk a few yards to the swimming pool. A swimming pool - obviously not a thing in Revolutionary France, and yet it just fits. We are in Celine's - our heroine's - time - and yet simultaneously we are in the future talking about swimming pools, although - again ironically - that passage above is actually about the Big Bang - billions of years in the past.

"The years go by. The time, it does fly. Every single second is a moment in time that passes. And it seems like nothing - but when you're looking back ... well, it amounts to everything." Ray Bradbury

Although only if you then think about it perhaps.

But this is a foodie blog, so - soused herrings. Because I hated them so much back then I have never tried them again, but maybe I would like them now. After all I do like various other pickled and preserved things. Jamie Oliver seemed to think that the British don't like pickled things, and perhaps, especially fish, but I suspect he has that wrong. Because soused herrings do seem to be a British thing. Well the word 'soused' is British, but really they are virtually the same as all the Scandinavian and Dutch pickled herrings.

However, I now admit I am now completely confused as to what a soused herring really is, as opposed to, say, rollmops. Rollmops are definitely rolled up - which is how I remember my soused herrings at the beach. And in my head at least what I threw towards the seagulls at least began as rolls, though I'm guessing they unrolled in the air.

Somewhere I saw that one thing is raw and pickled and the other is cooked and pickled. Having now looked at various recipes for soused herrings I am still confused, because some were cooked, some were not, some were rolled, some were not. So I give up. This is a description from Barbara Rolek of The Spruce Eats which introduces her recipe for Pickle herring for Polish rollmops (rolmopsy)

"Rollmops are easily prepared at home and recipes vary by region and taste. But, typically, salted herring fillets are soaked in water, spread with mustard and rolled up with a piece of pickled gherkin or pickled onion in the middle. A toothpick holds its shape. The rolled fillets are then transferred to a preserving jar and topped with a warm marinade made from vinegar, water, chopped onion, peppercorns, bay leaves, and mustard seeds." Barbara Rolek/The Spruce Eats

It's a very similar recipe to one by Rachel Khoo on the delicious. website, but there it is called Soused herring and the herrings are not rolled up. Delia on the other hand, although following the same method rolls them up around mustard gherkin and onion and calls them Soused herrings. So far, so good as far as names are concerned but then you come to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who calls his Cider vinegar and orange rollmops.

I got myself really confused however, but in a different way when I came to Neil Cooks Grigson who made Jane Grigson's Soused herrings from her book English Food. I have that book but there is no such recipe in it. He wasn't all that impressed either, saying at the end of the experiment:

"Well this was a middling recipe really, not inedible but not very exciting either. The well-flavoured pickling liquor was much better than the liquor used for rollmops. However, rollmops they were, which are never going to have me doing cartwheels. 4.5/10."

And whilst we are on the gurus, Elizabeth David does not have a recipe in her learned tome on Salt, Spices and Aromatics in English Cookery - where you would think you might find one. There are other pickles in there.

Finally I was yet again confused by our own Maggie Beer, who had a slightly fancy recipe for Soused herrings with currants and onions which were not rolled up at all. Neither are Dutch soused herrings. They eat them whole - holding them up in the air by the tail and then lowering the whole thing into their mouth. Even more unappetising than my original soused herrings, which I will swear were rolled up and just pickled, although they may have had something rolled up with them - like onions or gherkins.

I did find one more interesting thing from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Neil Buttery of Neil Cooks Grigson - that herrings had a lot to do with the massive expansion of the British rail system:

"In Old Norse, herring means "army" and, like an army, these fish were always on the move, following the plankton on which they fed and creating wealth wherever they were pulled out of the sea. ... Our appetite for herring, not just in its salted and smoked form, but spanking fresh, too, even led to the expansion of the railway system, connecting such far-flung ports as Wick and Ullapool to the cities." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

"Pickled herrings are not really considered as an English food these days, more Scandinavian, yet they were enjoyed frequently, after all how else were those inlanders going to get to eat them prior to the invention of the train?" Neil Cooks Grigson

Nigel doesn't have a recipe for soused herrings, although does have one for Herring rillettes, which I have to say look rather more tempting. He does use them however, buying them from a shop. And you can certainly do that. I wonder whether my guest house hosts made their own or bought them in?

Once you've made them - or bought them they are pretty useful - if you like them that is:

"Having a jar of pickled herring in the fridge makes it a doddle to rustle up a quick winter salad. Try some chopped and mixed with sour cream, finely diced apple or cooked beetroot, and a few slivers of onion, then spoon on to rye bread; or combine with cooked, cubed potatoes and capers, and dress in a mustardy vinaigrette." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

"The reason marinated herrings, or rollmops, work so well is the acidic bath of vinegar and spices that cuts through their über-oily flesh. Herring is best when used in this way, which is why crème fraîche works and sweet double cream doesn't, and why these little fishes respond so well to the presence of brined capers, lemon juice and white-wine vinegar." Nigel Slater

It's a big leap from my book to soused herrings, and yet, at the time, it seemed such an inevitable trajectory, albeit a mysterious one. But then memory and time are fundamentally inexplicable are they not? There is no way of telling now that my memory of throwing soused herrings to seagulls is a true one. I must ask my sister some time. In this case there is no photographic evidence. My brain may have made it up. Although surely not.

"We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory." Georges Duhamel

Which makes that particular memory important and valuable. If only perhaps, because it is remembered.

And those happy children on the beach - were they really happy or did they immediately afterwards start fighting with each other? And what beach was it anyway? It's sandy so it wasn't Portsmouth, where we visited my grandmother often, but it really could have been any number of any other beaches. Like this one, which photograph I love because, like the book it's sort of wrong - we are obviously cold but don't seem to mind - except my sister:

Perhaps my book is a kind of limbo. An in between time - or as H. G. Wells says:

"We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery."

Or to be more cynical:

"You know, some people say life is short and that you could get hit by a bus at any moment and that you have to live each day like it's your last. Bullshit. Life is long. You're probably not gonna get hit by a bus. And you're gonna have to live with the choices you make for the next fifty years." Chris Rock