Mackerel spread (with semi-fat twaróg)

A bit of a reminder of the good old communist days, isn’t it? A fish spread like this. The pinnacle of seafood in the days of the Polish People’s Republic. I wonder if you still remember 🙂 It was forgotten in my home for a long time. Mum reminded me of it about a year ago. When she told me she had some twaróg curd cheese mixed with smoked fish, I didn’t imagine I’d end up missing it.

So I can safely say the recipe comes from Mum, although I didn’t actually consult her. Today I tried to recreate the flavour I’d been reminded of several times at my family home over the past 12 months. I’m not mentioning Mum here by accident. She rang me with some very strong complaints after my żurek sour rye soup recipe.

Well, perhaps „very strong” is an exaggeration, but she insisted quite firmly that she was the one who had taught Dad (meaning Grandad 😉 to make that soup. So today’s recipe is definitely, if not directly from Mum, inspired by the mackerel spread she makes.

She does insist, though, that this isn’t really a simple dish, and please don’t pigeonhole Mum that way. She really can cook. I chose it for quite a mundane reason: I had both a mackerel and some very good twaróg (at some horrendous „organic” price), and very little inclination (to do any work).

Before I finally recommend Mum’s breakfast spread, I also wanted to mention that yesterday was very, very. Very nice, I mean. Perhaps I ate a little too much, but at least some of it had a seafood theme too (a delicious octopus starter; oh, so Gessler’s doesn’t serve the best one after all). So it was very, very, but we also saw a film. That’s what I wanted to talk about.

A film called „Birdman”. I went in completely blind. In the sense that I hadn’t read much about it before the screening. OUTSTANDING! Really. Starting with the way it’s presented as one never-ending scene (the impression of no cuts), with an evocative score — not even music, more a musical backdrop — a terrific Edward Norton, a brilliant Emma Stone and the performance of a lifetime from Michael Keaton, who seems to have been slightly forgotten by now. Above all, an extraordinarily evocative, hard-hitting story. I recommend it, even much more strongly than my mackerel spread 🙂 It really is worth seeing.

At a glance:

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Serves: as many as you make it for; the ingredients given will serve 2 – 3 people at most

How many calories: fish don’t count calories

Ingredients for twaróg and mackerel spread:

• 1 medium smoked mackerel (whole)
• about 150 grams of semi-fat twaróg curd cheese
• 1 medium shallot
• chives (I used the green tops from one spring onion)
• 3 teaspoons of 12% sour cream
• freshly ground black pepper

Recipe for a simple mackerel spread:

The recipe is incredibly simple. We’ll fit it into 4 short steps. Let’s get started:

1. I stripped the flesh from the mackerel and put it into a small bowl, making sure there were no bones. I mashed it thoroughly with a fork into a uniform mixture.

2. I finely chopped the shallot and spring onion greens.

3. To the bowl of prepared fish flesh I added the twaróg (there should be only slightly more of it by volume than fish), the shallot and the chives, and mixed thoroughly.

4. Finally, I seasoned to taste with freshly ground black pepper and added 3 teaspoons of sour cream. I mixed everything very thoroughly once more. I left it for 15 minutes (covered with cling film).

A tasty, simple breakfast spread is ready. Perfect with fresh bread. Enjoy!