Comments (4)

By Anna, 15 January, 2011 7:56 pm

As my husband is an avid sea angler and has his own blog, we are lucky enough to eat fish that he has caught with his own fair hands. Well, I say with his hands… there are poles and hooks and bait involved too, but you get my drift.
This does spoil you a bit when it comes to eating fish. I am used to eating fish no more than 24hrs after it has been caught. I know that it is a good size, was caught fair and square and was despatched quickly and humanely. More to the point, it tastes fantastic because it hasn’t been travelling around the country in a refrigerated van for a week. This is lucky, I know this.

As DH fishes, fish issues are a bigger feature in my life than I ever intended them to be. I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight programmes advertised and we watched them last week. Uncomfortable viewing indeed and a message that needs to be shared.

The main points are:
1. When species quotas are reached and those specific fish are subsequently caught as by-catch, they have to be discarded. They are thrown, dead, back into the sea because it is against the law to land them. This accounts for around half of the total catch. There isn’t an easy solution to this; many of the target species inhabit similar grounds and are inevitably caught. There has to be a better way than this.

2. Tuna that claims to be environmentally friendly and dolphin friendly may not necessarily be so. The only way to be sure is to only buy pole and line caught tuna from Sainsburys, Marks and Spencer or Waitrose. If it doesn’t specify this, then it’s caught by purse-seine trawler method. Buy what you like, but be aware that purse-seine trawling has a by-catch. That by-catch is dolphin, shark and turtle. All dead.

3. Farmed Salmon. Their feed includes wild fish. 3kg of wild fish are hoovered up to contribute to the feed for each 1kg of farmed salmon. That’s insane. If you eat farmed salmon, try to buy organic farmed salmon because the feed is comprised of trimmings from fish that has been processed for food, thus has a lower impact on the wild fish stocks.

4. Vary the fish you eat. Everyone eats Cod, Haddock and Tuna. This is madness! There is a huge variety of local fish that can be eaten – spread your wings and try other fish.

Visit Hugh’s Fish Fight for full details about the campaign and how to get involved.

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So, with my soapbox nudged to one side, let me encourage you to eat the humble mackerel. It is so good to eat and very easy to prepare.

Learn how to fillet and remove the pin bones from mackerel

Here’s a lovely recipe for marinated and grilled mackerel

If you want an uber quick meal, just fry the mackerel fillets

I’ll be blogging about other fish dishes as we have them, but in the meantime, be adventurous and pester your supermarket, fishmonger and chippy for locally caught fish other than cod and haddock! Tight lines!

Just added: Dab!

Comments (4)

By Anna, 15 May, 2010 5:25 pm

Raymond Blanc’s marinated and grilled mackerel looked so delicious when he demonstrated it on his recent show, that we were eager for the mackerel season to start and as this is my third consecutive mackerel post, you can be confident that the mackerel are around. No more mackerel posts for a while after this one, I promise.

It’s a nice meeting point between cerviche and heat-cooked fish – a gentle introduction to the cooking of fish by acidic foods. It enhances the flavour of the fish, but in a strange way, tempers it, so this might be a nice recipe for people who want to like mackerel but don’t rave about it. If you are a fan of this plentiful oily fish, then this is an interesting and attractive recipe to consider. It’s worth mentioning also that because there’s a lot of vinegar sloshing around, you get little to no lingering cooking smell.

Continue reading 'Marinated Grilled Mackerel'»

Comments (35)

By Anna, 8 May, 2010 3:37 pm

Fresh mackerel.  Just a couple of hours after being caught and brought home and what a difference from those sold in supermarkets. Notice the eyes are bright and rounded – not sunken and discoloured. The flesh is firm and has retained its beautiful oil-slick rainbowing.

Now, of course you can gut them and bake them whole, but this is a demo, courtesy of my angling husband, on how to fillet them and remove the pin bones. There’s a lot to be said for the ritual easing of meat from bones whilst dining, but equally, there’s something completely wonderful about putting a piece of fish on your plate and not having to go all CSI on it.

You need a good knife. Fishy man has a filleting knife that he got from The Tackle Box (the tackle shop at Brighton marina)- its blade is thin and it’s sharper than a sharp thing. I really wouldn’t want to use a knife that is doubled up as an all purpose kitchen knife for this job. A sharper knife is a safer knife.

One disclaimer – this is a graphic demonstration of removing flesh from a dead fish. There is blood. If you don’t like looking at dead fish or blood, then you might like to peruse the recipe index for some baking recipes instead. Continue reading 'How to fillet a mackerel'»