Independence on a 5-Acre Farm

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In other words they are being cooked at the same time as they are being smoked. You must get them soft. They won't keep long, and like other smoked things are ruined by being put in the deep freeze.

Mackerel feeeze quite well (but should be eaten before three months are up). Herring don't freeze at all well, and I don't recommend it.

SPRATS come to our shores all round Britain, and considering what a delectable fish they are, are woefully neglected. After the first mad rush they sell for ridiculously low prices. You buy them at the peak of the glut, or catch them yourself with a drift net of the right mesh (again Bridport Gundry).

To make Kielersprotten, a common German remedy, soak sprats in 80 per cent brine (as for kippers, see above) for fifteen minutes. Stick them on a speat (sharpened stick) through their gills. Put them, still wet, in smoke at 90° F.

(32° C.) for half an hour then at 180° F. (82° C.) until they are soft and a delicious golden colour. If you put any smoked fish in jars and cover with olive oil or peanut oil they will keep for some time, and if you sterilize before sealing up by heating for half an hour they will keep much longer, and you will have something very like anchovies.

A method of treating salt herrings which a Dutchman told me, but which I have never tried, is to soak the salt herring in fresh water overnight, slice the fillets very thinly, soak in vinegar for an hour, smoke in dense hot smoke for half an hour, and pack in olive oil. It keeps for a couple of months in the winter, and it sounds delicious.

If you get sick of fresh mackerel during the mackerel campaign try this: heat some chopped parsley and a chopped onion in olive oil in a frying pan, shove in the mackerel, fry for five minutes, add three sliced tomatoes, salt. and pepper, some thyme and garlic, cover the pan up and let it simmer for five minutes. It gives mackerel-eating another lease of life.

PILCHARDS

Pilchards may one day visit these shores again, and in fact they do sometimes approach the south-westerly coasts. In the days when Cornishmen drank a toast to "Tin and Pilchards" before they thought of toasting the King the method of dealing with pilchards was thus:

They were caught in enormous quantities—when they were caught at all—with the seine net (nowadays the gill net or drift net would suit the self-supporter better). The pilchards were laid in plenty of dry salt layers to a height of five feet. They were left thus for a month or six weeks. The oil ran out in great quantities-into gutters, from whence it went into an underground sump where it was stored. The fish were then packed into barrels and often pressed with powerful presses to get the last drop of oil out of them. They were then sent off to the Mediterranean where the people must have been hungrier than the Cousin Jacks were because they would eat them. The oil was then used for lamps, for curing leather, for making soap and for many other purposes. It, and whale oil, were the chief sources of oil in this country for centuries. I merely mention this process here in case any self-supporter wishes to experiment. I have no doubt that either herrings or sprats would yield oil in the same manner. And if the squashed fish were found not much good to eat, and the Italians didn't want 'em, at least they would make excellent fish meal for fertilizer or for pigs or poultry.

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