Deal Herrings - fresh from the sea daily

The hard working fishing boats of Deal brave all weathers to bring herrings to our shore. Selling every day direct from Deal beach at 3 for £1.00 these are simply delicious seasoned and fried in butter.

 But, for a change we decided to cure a batch and make Cider Vinegar and Orange rollmops using Hugh Fearnley Whitingstall's recipe from his Fish book, as a reference. The only fiddly bit was  filleting which we admittedly need to practice more. We found that a sharp knife, a firm hold and confident cutting produced the cleanest of fillets.

The herrings were then soaked in salted water for a couple of hours whilst the pickling mixture of All spice berries, peppercorns, orange peel, bay leaves, sugar and sliced onion was brought to a boil and left to cool. Bringing it all together was simple with the help of wooden cocktail sticks and a large kilner jar.  They needed to cure for around 3 days, and can keep for up to a month. Ours won't last this long as we have used them ever since as a lunchtime snack, perfect with Finn Original Rye crackers from Peppers Health Food store.

We will be experimenting with the curing mixture, and fancy sweetening it up, trying a little more brown sugar and replacing the Cider vinegar with Sherry vinegar, which again can be found at Peppers.