Food Bartering: Wild Strawberries for Freshly Smoked Flatfish

Careful readers on my blog may have noticed a discrepancy in my strawberry posts. I claimed here to have picked a good kilogram of the best and sweetest strawberries in the world (this doesn't include all the berries - and there were many, oh so many, let me tell you - that ended up straight in my mouth as opposed to the basket), yet I only used 750 grams to make wild strawberry jam.

What happened to the rest? Well, we bartered them for 8 gorgeous fresh hot-smoked flatfish on Sunday night. And not just any flatfish, but eight lovely specimens of European flounder (Platichthys flesus trachurus), to be more precise:



Aren't they gorgeous? They're picked by a fisherman in our suburb, and hot-smoked by a kind friend who lives just around the corner. They're still small, as their peak season is only in August.*

I'll be eagerly waiting for August, as 'suitsulest' (that's smoked flounder for you) is the smoked fish with the softest, tenderest, tastiest and most delicate flesh imaginable..

* Which means that the special foodblogger who's coming for a visit in August is in line both for a jar of wild strawberry jam, a guided tour to pick her first ever cloudberries and some unusual edible wild mushrooms, as well as eat some freshly smoked flatfish when they're at their best. Lucky her, let me tell you :)