Lent has begun and no one remembers the herring anymore, not even to bury it. Although we have gladly recovered the tradition of eating cod, that once humble product that has today been revalued in both price and prestige, salted and pressed herrings have not suffered the same fate: their faint shine increasingly goes unnoticed in the tabales or stave tabales, those circular boxes where the fish rests in the shape of a rosette.
In Spain we call salted and pressed sardines herrings, but in reality these are two different, although similar, animals: herrings (Clupea) and the European sardine (Sardina pilchardus). “What we sell and call herrings is not harangued, but traditionally the large sardine prepared in this way has been called that,” explain from La Ribera, distributors of canned and salted fish.
According to the historian Jaume Fàbrega, we call them herrings because they are prepared in the same way as herrings from northern Europe, that is, salted. To make matters worse, and as it could not be otherwise, they are given different names throughout the herring geography, from the Basque Country to Andalusia, passing through the south of France, Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and the Balearic Islands: herring, sardine salted, bota sardine, barrel sardine, helmet sardine (Catalunya and Valencia), pinxa (Menorca), arangara (Alghero), tabal sardines or emberricas sardines (Andalusia). In Barcelona, ??in the so-called fondes de sisos, the most popular dining rooms of the 19th century in the city of Barcelona, ??they were called guàrdies civils because they were always served in pairs.
Herring, which was even more popular than cod, was peasant food due to its good conservation and portable format. “It was a survival meal: in the countryside, I had a meal,” explains Emili Perelló, third generation of the house specialized in salted meats, Perelló 1898. “A plate of potatoes with vegetables, a handful of olives – preferably black ones – and a herring, along with some wine, and you could get through until night.”
Perelló explains that to make the herring hulls or tabales, the oxidation of the fish must be taken into account. “That is why the Galicians used thicker wood than the Andalusians. Well constructed, the tabales prevent rust. In fact, they used to be tapped to make sure they didn’t sound hollow, which means there were air pockets that would compromise the quality of the fish.” To prepare the herrings themselves, Perelló explains that large sardines are used and they are submerged in a brine of maximum salinity until they are placed on the table to be pressed. “They have to be sold quickly, while they still shine, although some people asked for them rusty, ‘with all their grease’.”
How do you eat salted herring? The first step is to get rid of that layer of scales and salt that covers them, and someone invented a method that today the Corpus of Catalan Cuisine includes as a recipe, herrings at the door, and it says like this: “Take a good-sized herring and wrap it with 2 sheets of newspaper. Place it facing outward in the threshold of a thick door. Adjust the door so that it presses on the package. Remove the paper and discard it; “You will have managed to scale the herring (much of the skin remains on the paper), extract the gut (which you must discard), separate the meat from the bone and break up the meat of the fish.”
Once cleaned, they can be eaten raw, with a splash of olive oil and/or vinegar, with fresh onion, with bread and olives or grapes (grape harvesters’ food), grilled to lightly toast, fried and/or breaded, with a plate of legumes, with bread with tomato, with sautéed vegetables. They are good for giving protein to a salad or a coca de recapte. The chef Ausiàs Signes, from the Ausiàs restaurant (Pedreguer, Alicante), explains that in La Safor and La Marina they also eat it like this: “the sardine is fried in oil, and removed; two pieces of bacon are fried; and they retire; green peppers are fried, and removed; and finally, some eggs are fried. You eat everything together and this is called having fun with music.” In the Terres de l’Ebre they are stuffed with clotxa and the historian Jaume Fàbrega also mentions other ways to eat them: stews, in soup and in fritters. From La Ribera they always recommend a fresh and sweet contrast, “like that of fresh tomato.”
“Today there are only a few herring factories left on Isla Cristina and nearby,” says Perelló. “They make a correct product but it is far from the quality offered by the Galician canneries that, in my opinion, offered the best product.” In fact, during the central years of the 18th century there was a huge temporary migration of Catalans to the Galician coast in search, precisely, of the “cooked sardine, manufactured by the Galicians themselves who for centuries had great experience in these tasks,” he explains. Daniel M. Bravo Cortés in Catalan salting warehouses in Galicia. After the War of Independence, the Catalans settled: they built salting warehouses “across all the bays and inlets of the Rías Bajas coastline.”
Despite everything, quite a few herrings are still sold, but they are not enough to once again turn it into a first-class profitable product. Many stores no longer have them in their windows because if they are sold poorly, they dry out and rust. As a solution, they can be sold already clean and with extra virgin olive oil, but this requires personnel and dedication.”
