Sylt fisk med Rödlöken

This is a recipe inspired by medieval food preparation but with significant deviations, and was served as part of the feast at Ymir 2008.

Preserved fish were important to the Norse, and I really wanted to make them a part of this feast.  The most common form of preservation was salting and drying, however, I had no hope of convincing the average feast-goer to eat salted cod.  I thought of a recipe from the Harpestraang manuscript for The Lord’s Salt which preserves meat in vinegar and spices.

I also found other recipes for fish with salt and vinegar, including one from Forme of Cury that I believe was meant more as a marinade than a preservative, and one from Martino that is preservative:  “To prepare carpione of trout as you would cook a carpione, clean the trout well and gut them, then pierce them in many places all over with thepoint of a knife.  Then make a brine with equal parts of water andvinegar, adding plenty of salt which you must dissolve thouroughy; and put the trout in for half a day or more.  And when this is done, transfer them to a table, putting them under a weight for three or four hours, and fry them well in plenty of good oil, so that they are nicely cooked but not burnt.  You can keep these trout for a month, refrying them if you like, and preparing them again as you would a carpione.” (Martino in Redon)

These recipes are very complicated, however, and I wanted a simple dish that would highlight the preserved fish, so my actual recipe was closer to a ceviche without citrus.

For this dish, I have used either cider or red wine vinegar.  Overall, I prefer the cider vinegar – an alegar would probably be the most appropriate choice, or else whey fermentation rather than an applied vinegar.

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