Matjes Herring

Having returned from trekking across Iceland and Stockholm, Sweden, I'm finding that I'm missing the taste of pickled fish for breakfast. Eh?? Yup. I thoroughly enjoyed the various forms of their pickled herring and other fishies. I also delighted in trying their potted fish, shrimp, mushroom and some such. Yes, I had some big breakfasts as a result of wanting to try everything offered up. Thankfully, the potted _____ (fill in the blank) came in small containers like you'd find with butter so I could share one with my travelling mate and still have room in my belly for the next flavour. What fun!

So I return with a hankering for pickled fish. Of course I could find some at Ikea's marketplace but I wasn't about to head out there just for that. Instead, I scoured my local markets. I scored at the second place I visited. Most everywhere else had the local varieties, mostly of Jewish origin. Sorry, but I have the goal of finding the Scandinavian stuff. =P And so I was terribly delighted to find Finnish Matjes herrings pickled with spices at the local King's Supermarket. I had a wonderful appetizer of matjes herrings at an incredible restaurant in Stockholm so finding matjes herrings made me drool. Being from Finland made it Scandinavian. Sounds like a winner! To add to this though is the spices in the pickling mixture. The jar's contents looked an awful lot like some reddish-brown herring I had for breakfast. Compared to the white version, the reddish-brown one tasted of...spices such as cinnamon. Ooh, sounds like I really hit the nail on the head with this one, eh?

I couldn't wait to dig in so I bought some Wasa rye crispbread to go with it. Of course I had to save a bit of both for my travelmate to experience as well. Incredibly, both of us determined that it tasted exactly like what we had overseas! Hooray! Now this supermarket better not stop stocking it! =O Next goal now is to see if I can find the potted shrimp/mushroom/etc spread at breakfast. ;) Or maybe I'll have to find a recipe to make my own!