“Rosolli” Pickled Herring Salad

Any time you mix beets into something, the whole dish is going to turn pink. This salad can get pretty ugly…

But leave it in layers, and only add the dressing to the fish, and you’ll be alright. Heck, it might even be pretty. It’s a Finnish dish involving pickles, cooked beets and carrots, dill, green apples, and sweet-pickled herring that you can buy at the grocery store or fishmonger. It won’t be with the canned fish (tuna, sardines) since it’s a refrigerated product. You can also buy canned herring or sardines and put them in a sweet brine, but it’s not quite the same. Sardines are very different—funkier in terms of smell and flavour—than herring. Haddock or whiting would be a better choice. Even tilapia if you’re desperate. You need the sweetness of the pickles, though. I did two versions—one with pickled herring and one without fish—and the sweet pickled fish version was miles beyond the veggie kind called Punajuurisalaatti.

Here’s the recipe! It’s from Kiss the Kooks, a recipe blog written by an author whose mom is Finnish. Just don’t mix it all together. Instead, do a layer of diced pickle and carrots with dill, a layer of potatoes, a layer of fish and diced apple in sour cream sauce (I used coconut yogurt with 2 tbsp lemon juice), and repeat, repeat. I don’t know what it tastes like in Finland, but probably pretty similar flavour-wise.