Arnold Zwicky's Blog

First came the (pickled) herring, the tasty bounty of chilly ocean waters, also the delight of Scandinavia. Then came the (boneless) bananas, the fragrant fruit of tropical plantations, also the pride of Ecuador. When they met, there was the inevitable slide into fishy fruit, into a strange amalgam of sweet and savory; a quickie, and ill-advised, union of south and north, hot climes and cold climes, New World and Old:

(#1) From a 1963 German cookbook: bananas wrapped in pickled herring (from the Historic Photographs site on Facebook, passed along on FB on 12/15 by Michael Palmer, under the slogan: Everything’s better with pickled herring on it!)

The pimento and parsley garnishes make bananas in pickled herring a red and green Christmas surprise.Well, I’d certainly be surprised. On the other hand, we once had a cat that adored herring, even pickled in wine sauce, and savaged bananas ravenously (as well as loaves of bread and corn on the cob), so it would have found #1 to be the very apotheosis of fine feline dining (with the useless pimento and parsley batted off onto the floor, of course).

Backstory I: it swims in schools. From my 12/12 posting “Lutefisk and herring”, on (among other things) the pleasure of pickled herring, with a reference to my 9/26/17 posting “Black bread and pickled herring”, which has a section on herring the fish, and one on pickled herring, from which:

(#2) Pickled herring offered by Russ & Daughters (on E. Houston St. in NYC)

Backstory II: it’s got a bend in it. And then earlier today, my posting “boneless bananas”, with some bendy boneless wonders for sale at a Piggly-Wiggly supermarket:

(#3) And then #3 + #2 + some garnishes = #1

This entry was posted on December 18, 2024 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Holidays, Language and animals, Language and food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.