[Sca-cooks] Kind of an odd (dumb) question

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Elizabeth A Heckert:
>     Dear the List
>
>     I have two recipes for rollmops, but I am not sure if you cook the
>herring once it is pickled.  If there is anyone has made rollmops, could
>you share your experiences?

I don't have any personal experiences, per se, with roll-mops, other 
than occasionally eating them, but the recipes I've seen all seem to 
use the same, basic technique (also used for other herring 
preparations). There are other and very different methods, too, but 
something like surstromming is way different from roll-mops...

As I recall, you make a highly seasoned pickling liquid, probably 
from vinegar and wine, maybe a small amount of sugar, definitely salt 
and "pickling spices". You bring this to a boil, and, while still 
hot, pour it over your herring. This both slightly cooks the herring, 
and allows the pickle to penetrate the herring more quickly, 
resulting in what looks like lightly cooked fish (and may actually 
be), but for practical purposes behaves more like ceviche. The flesh 
of the herring is firm and opaque like cooked fish, but flexible and 
non-flaky, somewhere in between what we'd expect from cooked fish, 
and raw fish.

It is usually then eaten in that form, with stuff like sliced onion 
and sour cream. The main difference between roll-mops and much of the 
other pickled herring from Central and Eastern Europe is the fact 
that they're fillets rolled around pieces of onion, maybe also carrot 
and bay leaves. But the basic pickling method I've described is also 
used for pickling flat fillets, "snacks" (which are like little 
cross-cut steaks, with skin and bone), and skinless and boneless 
bite-sized pieces (probably the most common).

Adamantius