Post #432,442
2/2/20 8:45:30 PM
2/2/20 8:45:30 PM
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Surstromming - Yes, I did it - I had to do it.
I ordered a can of Surströmming from Sweden and set it out on the table at my Scandinavian themed Musica Donavania event, with a sign over it saying " Surströmming - If You Dare", with a warning that anyone who made me open the can had to eat some of it. But now, 8 months from canning date, the can was getting quite severely swollen, though reports are they can take a lot more (the "Best By" date was a year from now). So, I decided I might as well take care of this now - so here it is, with lots of photos: Surströmming Adventure.
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Post #432,443
2/2/20 10:00:51 PM
2/2/20 10:00:51 PM
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Jeez, and I thought lutefisk was different.
Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #432,444
2/2/20 10:12:26 PM
2/2/20 10:12:26 PM
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I haven't done lutefisk yet
The Scandinavians say it is currently far more popular in the US Midwest than in Scandinavia.
Someday I may fake up a batch of gravlax, (salmon from the grave) but I can't make it by the original method, the weather here is too warm and I live to far from the tide line. Originally, the salmon was salted, then buried in the wet sand at the tide line for a week or two to ferment.
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Post #432,445
2/2/20 10:35:23 PM
2/2/20 10:35:23 PM
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That's not a recipe
That's what happens when you get drunk fishing and drop a fish on the beach, then find it when you go fishing again the next weekend.
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Post #432,449
2/3/20 6:26:25 PM
2/3/20 6:26:26 PM
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wonder how different it is from stinkheads, fermented alaska salmon heads
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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Post #432,461
2/5/20 8:10:37 AM
2/5/20 8:10:37 AM
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That stuff is banned from passenger jet cabins on 4 airlines
Too many of them exploding at high altitude and polluting the air. New Scientist just had a recipe for fake gravlax using salt, sugar, and dill: Start with a 1-kilogram piece of salmon and remove any pin bones with tweezers. Mix 50 grams of coarse salt and 50 grams of sugar, then add some spices if you like: a tablespoon of peppercorns, coriander seeds or caraway seeds, ground in a mortar, works well. Rub the mix into both sides of the salmon, then place it on a bunch of dill in a dish, skin side down. Top it with more dill and a plastic covering, then put a heavy item on top to press down on the salmon.
Keep it in the fridge for a day, then turn the salmon over, repack and refrigerate for another day or two. All you need to do then is scrape off the dill, cut some slices and serve with rye bread. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #432,541
2/10/20 3:23:28 AM
2/10/20 3:23:28 AM
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Lutfisk, properly watered-out, is pretty much nothing compared to surströmming.
This was weird; I can't imagine the one I had a while -- hey, oops, over a decade! -- ago was all that much younger than yours, and that was quite identifiable whole little fishies. I remember splitting them into two fillets, scraping off some skin and fins, etc. Lutfisk[1], OTOH, is just bacalhau[2] that's soaked in a bit of lye in stead of just water to soften it faster. (Except that, at least in the Swedish tradition, it's supposed to be made out of ling[3] in stead of cod.) Nowadays the whole thing is of course unnecessary, so it's one of those frozen-in-time old dishes that nobody (except really old folk[4]) really likes, that is eaten only on Christmas (or for some other dishes, other high holidays) out of "tradition". This may, BTW, explain the weird rigmarole I saw in one American recipe online, of soaking it in lye again, after you've already got most of it out by soaking in water. Anyway, whichever way you make it: Lutfisk is just a more or less gelatinous mass, tasting more or less of fish and/or lye. The worst thing about it is 100% the consistency, not the taste -- not that the taste is particularly great either. Surtrömming, OTOH... You have to get past the smell, and the be a fan of pickled fish in the first place, in order to appreciate that, once -- if -- you're even able to discern it. Not to be mentioned in the same breath as puny lutfisk. --- 1: No 'e' in it in Swedish; seems English went with the Norwegian spelling. 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfish3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ling4: My mother-in-law is quite keen on it. --
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who (used to think he) Knows Fucking EverythingMail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
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Post #432,594
2/11/20 8:40:01 PM
2/11/20 8:40:01 PM
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Thanks for your input.
The photo on Wikipedia is much as you described here. I just thought it must have been opened very young.
Next year I may order one earlier, and if that is different from the one I had this year, I'll also order one later.
It's not that I actually like this stuff, but, you know, "For Science".
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Post #432,619
2/12/20 10:15:14 PM
2/12/20 10:15:14 PM
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now that is interesting, In alaska we have a fish called ling cod as distinct from cod
a lot of scandinavians came there over the years, I wonder if the name is related "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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Post #432,620
2/12/20 11:25:56 PM
2/12/20 11:25:56 PM
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No
Lingcod (Ophiodon elongatus) lives along the west coast of North America from the Mexican border through the Aleutian Islands. It is not a Ling, nor a Cod, and is not closely related to any other fish genus.
Ling (Molva molva) is strictly a North Atlantic fish, from Spain to within the Arctic Circle, from Nova Scotia to the Arctic Circle, and along the southern coast of Greenland.
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Post #432,625
2/13/20 3:02:05 AM
2/13/20 3:02:05 AM
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Could still be as the BOx says, that *the name* is related?
Like, if those Scandinavian-Alaskans -- presumably more familiar with the ling than the average English-speaker around them -- thought "this looks a bit like a cod, and a bit like a ling, so..." Dunno how much of an effect they could have had on the English name, but perhaps? --
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who (used to think he) Knows Fucking EverythingMail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
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Post #432,633
2/13/20 11:03:00 AM
2/13/20 11:03:00 AM
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They are both rather elongated fish . . .
. . and they live in similar environments. It would be natural for people familiar with the Atlantic Ling to make the association when they encountered the Pacific fish, which is a bit stubbier, thus the added "cod" part.
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Post #432,638
2/13/20 5:30:37 PM
2/13/20 5:30:37 PM
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Yup: The Pacific one, "elongatus"... While ling -- m. molva -- is "Långa" in Swedish. As in "Longa".
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Post #432,635
2/13/20 4:09:38 PM
2/13/20 4:09:38 PM
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thanks for the knowledge
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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Post #432,640
2/13/20 6:21:15 PM
2/13/20 6:21:15 PM
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Oh sure, *that* you believe
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Post #432,642
2/13/20 6:24:38 PM
2/13/20 6:24:38 PM
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it is sourced properly
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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