A ‘herring head’s’ heavenly NYC farewell

YOU can buy my heart with herring in all its forms – plump rollmops from Woolies eaten straight from the tub; creamed herring from Giovanni's in Green Point on a Friday, sweet and sour with tiny studs of gherkin and dill; or a quick supper of pickled Bismarck herring alongside a boiled egg.

And don't get me started on smoked fish. The fatty eel from a smokehouse on a lake near my grandmother's house in Schleswig- Holstein still visits me in my dreams – wrapped in brown paper and cut into slices by my Uncle Eckart with his pocket knife. With a glass of beer around the kitchen table. Smoked eel is the most delicious thing I have ever put in my mouth.

My north German heritage has hardwired the simple peasant tastes of potatoes, beetroot and pickled and smoked fish into my register of comfort food.

I am drawn to Jewish delis like a pilgrim to a temple.

Russ & Daughters is a tiny sliver of a shop on New York's Lower East Side. It is next to Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery and a few doors up from Katz's, New York City's oldest deli – where Meg Ryan's “I'll have what he's having" scene in the movie When Harry Met Sally was filmed.

While Katz's is famous for its juicy, mustardy, piled-high pastrami sandwiches, the 108-year-old Russ & Daughters is one of the city's oldest “purveyors of the highest quality smoked fish, caviar, baked goods and speciality foods".

And it is not a deli but an “appetizing store".

“Appetising” is a Jewish food tradition most typical among American Jews and local to New York and New Yorkers. Used as a noun, “appetising” is most easily understood as “the foods you eat with bagels”. 

Eastern European Jews started meals with cold appetisers, “forshpayz” in Yiddish. In New York, the popularity of forshpayz among eastern European Jewish immigrants led to the creation of the institution known as the appetising store.

Appetising also originated from Jewish dietary laws, which dictate that meat and dairy products cannot be eaten or sold together. As a result, two different types of stores sprang up: delicatessens selling cured and pickled meats and appetising stores selling fish and dairy products.

The little bell on the back of the front door rings as I push it open. The simple glass-fronted counter holds dishes of smoked and cured fish, pickled herring, homemade salads and cream cheeses.

The whole smoked fish, lying in neat rows, include whitefish (a term for various types of mild-tasting freshwater fish), cisco (lake herring), “kippered" (hot smoked) salmon, sturgeon, sable, yellowfin tuna and sides of peppered mackerel.

For a herring head like me, the selection of little silver fishes is like culinary sheet music.

Herring in cream, curry, mustard and dill sauce.

Swedish matjes (maidens) are young, pre-spawning herrings generally fished in the North Sea. The Swedes marinate them in brown sugar and cloves, which impart a sweet and salty flavour.

The Germans preserve herrings in vegetable oil, while the French smoke and serve them over warm potatoes. But the premier herring experience has to be the Hollandse Nieuwe. This is the spring catch of Dutch matjes, prized for their high-fat, low-salt content and buttery texture. And then, of course, the “schmaltz herring", caught just before spawning when its fat (schmaltz in Yiddish) is at its maximum.

But I also came to pay homage to the slabs of ochre and orange lox. I vividly remember the perfect bagel from this shop on my last New York visit, and the glistening sides of smoked Gaspe Nova and Wild Western Nova salmon alongside Scottish, organic Irish and Norwegian salmon are breathtaking. So, too, the cured salmon: gravlax, “pastrami-cured" salmon belly and pickled lox.

I ordered a toasted bagel thickly schmeared with horseradish cream cheese (you can also choose natural and scallion), slices of melting lox, red onion and extra capers. It came wrapped in Russ & Daughters' signature wax paper printed with small blue fish (a detail I love).

I asked for a small tub of potato salad from the deli display, a single smoked French herring and a jar of fresh horseradish to take home in my suitcase. You can never have enough horseradish on anything.

It was my last meal in New York – the sublime bagel with buttery, smoky lox (and a bit of extra horseradish from my jar), the tiny tub of pared-back, vinegary, dilly, capery, German-style potato salad with a dressing of canola oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper and lemon juice.

And five small bites of smoked herring.

Eaten in a park while watching kids play basketball and the unmistakable smell of marijuana wafting from the guy smoking two benches upwind.

It was perfect in every sense.

How to make

I have chosen the recipe for one of their signature dishes from Mark Russ Federman's book Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House That Herring Built.

Although nothing you can buy here at home will come close to that extraordinary fish from the Russ & Daughters counter, smoked salmon is available at Woolworths, Checkers and certain fishmongers.

Smoked Salmon Tartare

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg of mild smoked salmon 
• One medium red onion, finely diced
• ½ cup finely chopped scallions (white and light green parts only)
• Two tablespoons of red wine vinegar
• 1½ teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
• One tablespoon of minced fresh parsley

Method

Cut the smoked salmon into small blocks of about 0.5 cm. Combine the salmon, red onion, scallions, vinegar, olive oil and parsley in a large bowl and mix gently until just blended. Serve with endive leaves, crackers or bagel chips. 

This is enough for 24 servings.

♦ VWB ♦

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