Sunday, July 2

Support your Local Fishmonger: Week Two

Yesterday’s trip to Steve Hatt’s shop made up for the slight extravagance of last week.

I returned with a mackerel and a trout, both bright in the eyes and firm of flesh. (With mackerel in particular a really fresh specimen is practically rigid. You can hold it by the tip of the tail and it will barely bend at all).

The fish came to just over a fiver. The trout was farmed, the mackerel wild and line-caught. It was interesting to compare the tail fins of both fish. The trout’s fins were rounded and frayed from rubbing against the cage or net that contained them. The tail fins of the mackerel were sharp and angular, a sure sign it was sea-caught.

In this heat you don’t want to spend long in the kitchen. I used my trusty pressure cooker to cook some new potatoes, steamed some fresh spinach, and microwaved some left-over (homemade) chickpea curry. Grilling the fish, we had a meal on the table in less than fifteen minutes.

1 comment:

Mike said...

I'll have to give that fishmonger a try. It's the best thing to eat in the summer. We're going to Lisbon in September which is supposed to be one the best places you can have fish.