I worked in several places that put fish in pole position on the menu, plus I live in a town that has a small fishing community. I know fish and will eat anything basically. I try to eat sustainably and use cheap fish, but sometimes I want cod or I cant be bothered to pick the crab.
It always surprises that there is a list of peoples food turn offs - and fish regularly appears, Oyster, anchovy and shellfish. I just hate badly cooked food. Whats not to like with fish - its good for you, full of flavour and looks amazing. Still. So, just a small explanation of fish - sea fish specifically.
The ethics - this list goes on and on.
A big topic - Im covering my personal view of it. There are so many ethical issues with fish that its mind boggling. These include ‘freshness’ or how close to death you eat them, farming - both good and bad aspects, actual fishing both good and bad. Its a total minefield and its almost impossible to do the right thing in my opinion.
Mechanised fishing
Factory ships and industrial fishing - its just shit. Hoovering the ocean for food. Its not a smart idea. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. Just to look at it you know its wrong. Sorry if you’ve got a job on one. I won’t support it if possible. Then you have drag fishing thats obviously highly destructive. This is without even going into the international food chain where massive factory ships are hoovering up important stocks like krill that whales depend on. Then it comes into politics - with recent Brexit changes a large part of the very mechanised European fleet will have been banned from British waters in particular MPAs, which in my opinion is a very good thing.
Greenpeace have a ship going out, so Im going to post their video here, I think its a travesty that massive destructive trawlers are allowed to continue damaging areas that are meant to be protected.
Pollutants
Well - this is a very good reason to be recycling and stopping plastics from being ditched in the ocean, but also heavy metals and bacteriological ingesting in bivalves. Its so difficult to not be eating something that is probably bad for you.
Live food
It’s a difficult one. You east oyster alive almost, but being bivalve they are pretty close to a plant. Eating an animal with eyes that is still moving. It’s disgusting and makes me think about retching. I just find some predominantly asian practices very disturbing ( warning - prepare to feel sick ) and wonder how anyone could really be able to do it. And it gets much worse than this with some people actually eating live fish, which is exceptionally dangerous.
Farming
It has to be good right? wrong. It just isnt that simple. There are a whole host of issues that come along with farming. It's intensive and bad for the animals quite often and really bad environmentally. The food takes loads of energy to produce so you can feed the animals your’e farming. So you have to weigh it up against non destructive methods of fishing.
Forced labour
This happens in both farming and fishing. It’s not easy to be sure how significant this is here, but of course do we ask where the fish actually comes from. Making the supermarkets accountable by publishing these details is obviously key. Prawn is going to be farmed when bought from the supermarket or it wouldn’t be economically feasible for them, and this means Asia is the source where forced labour or wage slavery is an issue. Then the farms are obviously caused of this - in this country alone of course we have the sad case of the Chinese cockle pickers at Morecambe bay - which just goes to show how easily this stuff can go under the radar.
Sustainability
So to attempt a round view of all these things seems almost impossible but none the less this is what has to happen. The good fish guide is at least a good guide to where your’e thinking should be going. Generally our common fish are not too bad, with some cod not making the cut, and most tuna is out. It’s going to be a touch call with supermarkets as they have access to such diverse markets in comparison to a local seller. Id suggest prawn is out because of the labour issues. They comply with legislation but will choose to duck out of stuff if they think they can get away with it.
My personal approach is to use a local seller because I just don’t trust the supermarkets. They stand to gain too much by being guarded about the critical information. So you go to the local seller and much of the standard fish are at least ticking quite a few of the sustainable boxes.
Greenish : Lobster, crab, squid, mackerel, pollock, coley, turbot, brill, John Dory, bream, monkfish, sole, local hake, muscle and clam
Amber-ish : Cod, haddock, salmon, bass, scallop, cockle, oyster and many prawn types
Red-ish : Tuna, eel, halibut, shark, langoustine or scampi, skate and ray
And this is not hard and fast because it all comes from different areas and different methods are used. Plaice for example is one of my favourites and mostly where I am, it seems OK, but in other areas its bad news. And skate - very similar - so this is a very rough guide.
And it’s no surprise that the family favourites are amber. Generally the foodies fish choice at the fishmongers is the safe fish if a little more expensive, but they do sell the amber stuff because they need to so they can compete with the supermarkets. I couldn’t live without the green fish, the other two I definitely could.
How much
Im going to assume we are at the fishmongers here. Sometimes like with Cod I can get it from the supermarket, and it can be very good quality. But generally its a proper fish mongers. The very worst position you can be in at the fishmongers is to not understand what stuff costs. Its a minefield - you can spend a fortune very quickly and thats not economic, but you can freeze it if you in a fix that way. Yes though to know what you want and have an idea of what it will cost.
For example a whole fish might look cheap - like turbot, and you think £36 a kilo isn’t bad, but you then have a load of weight of fish bone because it doesn’t come filleted. Likewise skate wing looks cheap but you get a lot of bone. What you need is a meat minus bone cost. They don’t do this unfortunately.
Generally its a bit like this - but this can vary, its not hard and fast
- If you have to ask how much you cant afford it : Lobster - like that Stellar Artois ad, reassuringly expensive, but Lobster is actually worth the label
- Very expensive : Turbot, brill, tuna steak, Dover sole, monk fish ( annoyingly ), langoustine, picked crab and sea bass
- Expensive : Cod, haddock, salmon, hake, crab ( whole ) and scallop ( because generally you eat a lot less ), Prawn and my favourite plaice.
- Economically sound : Mackerel, gurnard, pollack, coley, muscle and the snotty shellfish like whelk - not my favourite.
Cooking
This could be very complicated as they all use slightly different methods. Here is a very simplified notation - but generally you are following a recipe anyway.
Fish - generally, fish is cooked with a high heat very quickly to keep the flavour locked into the meat. Pan fried or under a decent grill. A very thick bit of cod might take ten minutes or so. A flatfish should be minutes.
NB - some people don’t like the skin. This is the tastiest part, like the chicken wing is on chicken. Particularly with large flat fish, people seem to want to remove everything so you just get a bit of white meat. Chefs don’t do this - you get the skin because its full of flavour.
Crustaceans - crab and lobster are predominantly cooked by the seller. If not its a live creature and you’re going to be killing them yourself before cooking. And that means freezing them first. Time consuming and messy.
Bivalves - some you cook, some you eat raw, never eat any that look or smell bad - because you might not live to regret it.
Stock
Nothing is as good a fresh fish stock. I use the Knor pod stuff when needs must, but in reality its hard to replicate that richness. Take all the fish bits left over if you have them, and chuck in a bit of onion and anything else that goes.
Oil Crustacea
When I cook lobster ( and Ive never tried it with crab ) you can dry the shells in the oven for a few hours, then stick them in a jar with oil and a mix of herbs and spices of your choosing - I use garlic, mixed pepper corns, fresh herbs etc
I pinched this from the Roux brothers book on sauces which is excellent.
Dressed crab
I don’t know where I got this from, its been with me for as long as I can remember. White meat is lemon juice and seasoning. Brown meat has cayenne pepper added because of its very metallic taste with lots of parsley. It tastes absolutely nothing like the horrible crab paste you used to eat on sandwiches as a kid.
Fish in restaurants
Eating fish at restaurants used to be a very pretentious affair. If you were eating oyster you were basically rich. Ironically because it used to be the food of poor people. Indeed whilst living in Brighton I experienced how poorer immigrant communities used oyster and clam from the local area because it was free basically causing some havoc with the river authorities.
Now thankfully its less so, although we seem to be suffering from the rise and rise of 'ding ding' eateries and fish isnt nice and easy to deal with, thats another reason why cod and the like are on the menu at places like these - you take it out of the package. But thats another debate.
Don’t spray your potential life partner when on a high pressure date with Lobster liquid - cue many a film cliche.
What definitely should not be happening in fish restaurants serving fish thats still on the bone. I just so hate that. I pay a load of money to have a bit of flat fish and Im the one doing the dirty work. No thanks. I want my fish served as a fillet with the skin cooked perfectly on the side if needs be. Even lobster and crab. Do your work, Im paying for it. Get the meat on the plate not a load of cartilage.
