As a child at my grandparents house I remember some long oval plates filled with roe salad and black olives which were served on special occasions. I also remember eating so much of it that the plate was hidden from me in the most unaccessible and higher places. I’ve tried matching the childhood taste but the commercial versions seems to be based mainly on various gums and thickening agents. Yet it’s quite easy to prepare a roe salad if you find fresh roe.
Roe salad
Ingredients
- carp roe, 2 tbs. You can also use other types of roe but this is the most usual.
- 2 tbs semolina (gris de grau in romanian).
- sunflower oil
- 1 onion
- lemon juice from one lemon
Method
- bring to boil 100ml of water then add the semolina. Mix then let it cool. It’s like making a pudding.
- in the mean time finely chop the onion and squeeze the liquid. If you don’t remove as much as possible from the juice you might end up with some nasty after tastes.
- when the semolina has cooled mix 2, 3 tbs of the “pudding” with the roe using a blender
- start adding oil and incorporate into the mix. The quantity of oil is somewhat subject to dispute since I have seen many recipes which add extremely large quantities of oil. As I am concerned my goal was not to have a large quantity of bad roe salad but a small quantity of good salad so I only added oil until the mixture turned white/pinkish but you could still see the roe texture and feel the specific roe taste.
- finally add onion and lemon juice to taste. I added enough finely chopped onion to feel the taste but not enough to feel only the onion and enough lemon juice to remove as much as possible from the oily texture. The goal is to have a mixture of fish taste in a rather fluffy texture without any after effects.
- serve with black olives and white bread.