thin slices of cold-smoked salmon or gravlax
smoked Baltic herrings (whole)
fish roe (whitefish (vendace), rainbow trout or salmon)
1-2 Matjes herring fillets
For garnish:
lettuce (eg butterhead)
lemon wedges
hard-boiled egg wedges or halves
thinly sliced red onion
pickled beetroots
pickled gherkins
smetana, mayonnaise, crème fraîche or sour cream
fresh dill, parsley or chives etc

1. Clean smoked herrings: remove skin and detach flesh from bone. Discard bone, head and tail. Cut Matjes fillets in about 1 cm wide slices.
2. Since consisting of many ingredients, there are numerous ways of serving and presenting this dish, either mixing some ingredients with each other or serving everything separately.
3. For example, you may mix Matjes herring slices with sauce made of smetana and/or mayonnaise seasoned with eg mustard, chopped dill and a dash of lemon juice, sugar and pepper.
4. Or you can chop few slices of smoked salmon or gravlax and mix it with chopped red onion and creme fraiche or sour cream. You can use this paste as filling for small croustades or hollowed out egg halves.
5. Mix roe with chopped onion and smetana or serve plain or use as garnish on top of egg halves or croustades. Plain salmon roe makes a beautiful garnish.
6. Mix and arrange ingredients on each serving plate the way you like. Garnish with dill sprigs, lemon wedges, thin onion slices, gherkins and beetroots cut into small cubes, smetana, roe etc.