I felt a little guilty buying only one herring….it costs 70p and the fishmonger on Stoke Newington market still offered to prepare it for me. So I also bought some squid which I’ve realised over the last few months is easy to prepare and cook – this will be another post.
I hesitated with the herring, the last time I had bought fresh herring and baked it somehow, it was not a ‘wouah’ it’s delicious moment. More like…..there are lots of bones to pick. I am glad I bought it again and selected a recipe from Hugh Fearley (what’s his name???)…I had to fillet the herring first ( and I could improve my skills here, but you can find help from others: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byI8L1dSgNw).
The recipe is one of these (Scottish?) traditional recipes I have read many times but somehow never got to try. Very simply the fillets are dipped first in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, fennel seeds (whole). Then dipped into a beaten egg and then into fine oats, then fried. The flavour was lovely, the oat crust….crunchy and soft …I completely recommend it. So easy and quick. The recipe uses rolled oats. So I blended my jumbo oats to make them finer, probably even a little finer than rolled oats, I wanted to make sure they would cook properly.
Sounds delish. And the little video on boning the blighter is helpful.
Congratulations for persisting. Am going to try this tomorrow.
Hi, great to read your comment! How did it go? Made this recipe in a cooking class yesterday. I think it is really best if the oats are really fine. Even rolled oats could do with being blended a little. Bought 14 herrings from Steve Hatts on Essex Road first thing on Saturday morning…and asked fishmonger to fillet them….got plenty of roe as well which we seasoned, fried and served with lemon.