THE smoked mackerel pâté in the London pub set them
off: 'My wife and I are eating more and more fish at home these days,' said Clive. 'I think everyone is, we certain- ly have lots of fish, I love fish,' gushed Margaret.
It's all lies. There are 50-odd sorts of fish available, more than ten good recipes for each, and the best want eating at least five times a year, so there are enough fish dishes to eat fish more than twice a day every day. I bet Margaret has moved up from once a month to once a week, at the most. And if she has, one of her friends who was gushing last week has now stop- ped, for the national consumption of fish is still miserably low.
Low in quality too. 'They' seem curious- ly fond of cotton-wool-tasting identikit exactly six-ounce trout with stale almonds and foil, overpoached dry salmon, pre- cooked prawns which they re-cook (and make worse) with tinned tomatoes (Provençal), boring white fish in white wine or creamy sauces with tinned button mushrooms, countless weird and unsuc- cessful imitations of Dover soles (the real thing is not that good: it's just easy for the maladroit to manage) and endless moules, always mariniere.
To stop fish-gushers, invite them to a dinner where there really is 'lots of fish'. Fish is so diverse that it is quite easy to produce at least four very different courses. Start Clive or Margaret off with something raw, smoked, dried or salted the classic qualities with which to start a meal. If they say they like mussels, then some raw mussels with a little lemon or vinegar (there 'are two schools), raw squid marinated in garlic, olive oil and chilli, some razor-shells which wriggle as you cut the flesh from the shell and pop them in. Or what about home-preserved anchovies? Buy a couple of kilo of fresh anchovies, put them as they are in salt, change the salt every few hours, discarding any water, then after a couple of days put them in a jar with lots of crushed, dried red chillies and fill it up with olive oil. That will give you enough armaments to deter a dozen Clives. But if you need the big guns, it's dried fish you want. The Dagoes make the best but it's difficult to find in Blighty. So try the Chinese supermarket where there is the nearest thing: dried squid, dried octopus, dried stockfish, anchovies, whitebait. The last couple are best dry-fried. The others want gentle heating, then holding over a gas flame for a moment.
Course two might be fish soup, perhaps with croutons and rouille, perhaps with pasta, or risotto, or a modest fish stew (one cephalopod, one hakish fish, a few clams, some horse mackerel, nothing pricy), but you will have had to have had fish for the two days previously to have the snapper heads, crab shells and plaice skeletons for the stock.
Now a little change before the main course: the meal cannot go by without salt cod somewhere. A good brandade (salt cod, olive oil and milk) or the same turned into croquettes, or salt cod stewed with olives. If you've had a lot of salt fish for hors d'oeuvres but no shellfish, or if you haven't yet had any cephalopods, then now is the time for cooked squid in its own ink or octopus stewed with potatoes, or why not a fried crab or some fried (previously raw) prawns? For the last of the fish courses, I like to see a whole fish or at least a lump of fish — if we have to do without meat this Is something of a compensation. I can see why the Spanish put grouper high on their list. Then a large John Dory is always welcome as are red mullet, snappers, swordfish, tuna, bass, pomfret, turbot and many of the bream. Eels, of course, are favourite, but I am increasingly fond of the bizarre delta fish sold in Bangladesh' shops, many of which look very primitive and have an eel-like flavour. No need to have much with this course: olive oil and lemon with some, hollandaise or parsley sauce with the turbot, some capers with the swordfish, vinegar (insist on the southern French) with the tuna. Where to get the fish? Increasingly rarely at fish shops (though the good news i for Londoners is that Richards is back in Brewer Street, three doors further down than before), markets, wholesale markets, Bangladeshi and Chinese shops and the coast. After the fish, just a salad, cheese and pudding. The gushers are always saying how light fish is. At least they were before they had your dinner. The great advantage of fish being light, as all Imperative cooks know, is that you can eat more of it.
Digby Anderson
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