Froylein, anything for you.

Do it for me.

I hear Walmart has them on sale.

And the “I’ll forgive you for all the bad things you’ve said about me if you just apologize” thing works both ways.

Smelt:

en.wikipedia.o...

Sprats:

en.wikipedia.o...

Smelt are very bland also, but very fresh and clean-tasting. Just dusted with flour, deep fried and served with salt and lemon, I could eat pounds and pounds of them. So good.

Sprats is a generic name for small herring, it seems, and if you like smoked fish, the smoked sprats in a round can from Latvia are just

To.
Die.
For.

You can get them in any specialty European/Russian food market.

A can of those, some Swedish sour rye knackbrot, a bit of cheese, thin-sliced red onion, lemon, a fresh salad, and some good bitter Pilsner, and I’m good.

Save some extra lemon to de-fishify yourself afterward. The fish oil and smoke have a powerful smell.

Very much worth it, however.

But I love smoked whitefish and sardines.

Ephraim – are smelts the same as sprats? I bought a can of sprats once here – tiny fish with nothing to them, and blander than sardines.

However, I assume the actual recipe is a family secret.

Ephraim, red cabbage? Really? Wow, I’d never have thought anybody outside Germany loved it.
My mother always cooks large quantities (with some vinegar) and then fills the cabbage into jars with twist-off lids and flips them over like when cooking jam. The cabbage keeps fresh for months on-end that way.

Yes, with the potatoes the smelt would be very good. And the cucumbers. With dill.

This Chanuka, in addition to regular latkes, I made Swedish style latkes, what they call “Rarakor med Graslok” (can’t put in all the umlauts and diacritics Swedish requires).

Just coarsely grated potatoes with chopped chives, salt, and pepper, pressed very flat, and fried in butter and eaten right out of the pan as is.

Simple is best.

And my son is addicted to red cabbage, apples and onions (Rotkohl mit Apfeln), my father’s recipe and one of my all-time favorite childhood comfort foods. The tradition lives on. His Opa is so proud.

Ephraim, that recipe sounds great. The marinade for Brathering is similar, just with allspice only, no extra pepper (allspice is called “Pimentpfeffer” here; I also use it in gravy) and with pearl onions. If you just have the Brathering, you can eat it on bread, with a side of tomato-salad and baguette, with “Bratkartoffeln” (not hash browns, but German-style pan-fried potatoes), “Pellkartoffeln” (young potatoes boiled in their peel) with herbed quark and cucumber salad, …

Herring is the shizzits. Especially smoked herring.

However, herring goes better with aquavit or beer than with single malt.

Not herring, but:

Buy a mess of very fresh smelt (also called “whiting” or “white bait”). Gut them but leave the bones in. You can leave the head on if you like. If I could get fresh herring I would use them too. Back in the day, San Francisco bay used to have so many herring you could practically walk on them when they were running.

Dust in flour and quickly deep fry until crisp and golden. The fish cook quickly, so don’t over-fry them.

Prepare a marinade by boiling together vinegar (apple cider vinegar is best), some sugar, bay leaf, onions, coarsely crushed (or whole) peppercorns, a bit of celery and carrot for flavor (and sweet spices such as allspice and cloves, if you are into that.) And perhaps a whole small red chili if you like it a bit harif. This is all to taste, so I don’t have any quantities.

Place the cooked fish in a non-reactive vessel with a lid and cover with the hot marinade.

Let cool and then refrigerate for a day or two.

Break out the German-style thin rye or knackbrot, beer, and aquavit and go to town.

Besides, we’ve seen pics of your cakes and those look better than what most of our local bakeries produce.