Recipe: How to Prepare Caviar from Fish Eggs (ROE) (for Carolyn)

HOW TO PREPARE CAVIAR FROM FISH EGGS (ROE)

When you catch a fish that may have eggs and you want to make caviar, clean the fish immediately, and if it does have egg sacks, put them in a plastic bag and on ice. As soon as you can, start the caviar. Slit the egg sacks, and clean the eggs from the membranes they are attached too. This is the hard part. Use your fingers, continually cleaning out the little pieces of membrane. A steel screen with 1/4 inch or so mesh can be a help. Through all of this process do your best not to break the eggs. Do most of this work in a bowl of clean, cold water, and when all of the membrane has been sorted out, and the eggs are clean, drain them well.

Measure the eggs, and for each cup of eggs, make a brine of two cups of cold water and 1/2 cup kosher salt in a glass bowl large enough to hold both brine and eggs. Add eggs to cold brine and swirl gently occasionally for 15-20 minutes. Drain in a sieve and refrigerate for at least an hour or two and preferably overnight.

Caviar is good on crackers, with baked or boiled potatoes, scrambled eggs, blinies, crepes, deviled eggs and such. Decorate the caviar with a slice of lime, a bit of minced onion, or a little sieved hard boiled egg yolk. Serve with ice cold vodka, champagne or a clean, cold Pilsner. If you like caviar, this is excellent.

This same Caviar can be salted a bit more heavily, mashed, and used to make the Middle Eastern delicacy Taramusala. It can also be heavily salted, left to drain a while and then mashed and dried to a hard, flavorful concentrate which is quite delicious, high in nutritive value and rather indestructible. Caviar can be preserved in small jars if you use the same preserving techniques you would use for cold meat, fish or corn. The texture deteriorates badly, but the flavor and nutritional value are still good.