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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Hollandse Nieuwe

Last weekend I got to see the open market, which sells everything from clothes to food, from a selection of countries worthy of a UN summit - Suriname, Morocco, Laos, Turkey...

I also had my first experience with 'authentic' Dutch food - raw herring! This is called Hollandse Nieuw (or Dutch New), and it's herring caught around the end of spring through the start of summer, preserved in some soup of enzymes. It's usually eaten with raw onion. It doesn't taste so bad if I psych myself into thinking it's sashimi.
So what's so special about this herring? Apparently, a lot, according to Wikipedia:
- Fat content must be at least 16%.
- It should be caught between mid May and late June.
- It is salted and matured.
- It is properly filleted i.e. all the bones are removed, leaving the tail.
- It should be sold at maximum 7 degrees to prevent any possible parasites!

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