Fish & Sea Foods
Lobsters and crabs These are normally caught in pots, which are cages with funnels into them so that the shellfish can get in but not out. The pots can be made of willow, steel mesh or wire netting. A more sophisticated pot is the "parlour pot" which is longer than the usual pot with an entrance hall at each end and then net funnels into the "parlour" which is in the middle. If you have to leave pots out for long because of bad weather the parlour pot is good, because the lobsters, on finding themselves confined in the entrance halls, try to get out, get into the parlour, and wait there. Meanwhile the bait is not eaten and attracts more lobsters. When trawling you may catch hermit crabs. If fishermen do not want the tails of these for bait they normally throw them overboard. This is nonsense as the tails, boiled, are delicious. Spider crabs, too, are delicious to eat. Seaweeds Many seaweeds are edible, but there are two plants that are excellent to eat: laver weed (Porphyra umbilicalis) and samphire (Salicornia europaea). Laver weed has thin, translucent purple fronds and grows on rocks on the beach. To cookityou soakit for afewhours in fresh water, dry it in a slow oven and powder it in a mortar. Then boil it for four hours, changing the water. Drain it and dry it and you have made laver bread, the stuff that the South Wales coal miners used to think was good for their chests. Eat it with bacon for breakfast. You can just wash laver weed well and boil it for several hours in water in a double saucepan. Beat this up with lemon or orange, and a little butter or oil and it makes a good sauce for mutton. The other really valuable seaweed, samphire, is not really a seaweed at all. It looks like a miniature cactus growing below high-tide mark, and can be eaten on the spot raw as it is (provided the estuary is not polluted). It can be boiled and served like asparagus with butter but if you eat it like this you must draw the flesh offbetween your teeth leaving the rough fibres behind. Samphire also makes a most magnificent pickle. To pickle, fill a jar with it, add peppercorns and a grated horseradish, if you like, then pour into the jar a boiling mixture of dry cider and vinegar in equal quantities, or else just vinegar. Some of the other more delicate seaweeds, such as sea lettuce (Ulva lactuca) and dulse (Rhodymenia palmata) can be treated in the same way as laver weed. Sea-kale is also edible but it is really a perennial vegetable. It is native to the sandy shores of the North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean, but it can be cultivated in the garden where it should be treated like rhubarb. The leaf shoots of sea-kale are blanched and eaten like asparagus, and you can cultivate it in any cool or temperate climate which is similar, to some extent, to its seashore origin. SMOKING A N D PRESERVING FISH Eel To smoke eel, gut the fish but do not skin them. Wash them and lay them in dry salt for twelve hours, then hang 206
them on sticks and dip theminboiling water for afewseconds. This makes the fish open out. Smoke over an open fire at 140°F (60°C) for from two to four hours according to what size they are. Eat them like that, don't cook them. They are probably the most delicious food known to mankind. Salmon To smoke salmon, fillet the fish and remove the ribs. This is difficult, but you can trim the flesh away a little so that you can see the ribs and pull them out with a pair of pincers. String through the shoulders and carefully score the thickest part of the head end of the fish so the salt can get in. Lie the fish on a layer of fine salt, put half an inch of salt on the thick end and taper the salt off to nothing at the tail end. Leave the fish in salt for 12 hours for a IT to 2 pound (0.7 - 0.9 kg) fillet, 18 hours for a 3 to 4 pound (1.4 -1.8 kg) fillet, and 24 hours for a fillet over 4 pounds (1.8 kg). If the underlying flesh still feels soft at the end of the given period leave the fish a little longer in the salt. Then wash the salt well out, and smoke the fish for 24 hours at 70°F (21°C) in heavy smoke, and for 12 hours at 80°F (27°C) in lighter smoke. Olive oil rubbed on the fish during the cooking is a good idea. Neither smoked eel nor smoked salmon will keep indefinitely. To deep freeze them should be an indictable offence, although to deep freeze the fresh fish and then thaw and smoke them is pardonable. Plenty of other fish, both fresh water and salt, can be smoked to advantage. The above methods are known as "cook-smoking", as opposed to the "cold-smoking" that produces kippers (and bacon). Kippers To make kippers, split your herrings, mackerel or pilchards down the back, running your knife alongside the backbone. Soak in 70 to 80 percent brine for an hour or two, then smoke for 6 hours at 85°F (30°C). The harder you smoke them the longer they will keep but even that is not very long. Bloaters To make bloaters, do not head or gut your fish. Leave them buried in dry salt overnight, and smoke them for four hours at 80°F(27°C).Imerely leave them in the big open chimney over a wood fire. Then if I come in hungry late at night, I pull a few down, lay them on the hot ashes for a few minutes, and eat them. Salting pelagic fish To salt herrings, mackerel, pilchards and other pelagic fish, gut the fish and bury them, in barrels or crocks, in dry salt. You can soak the salt out when you want to eat them, and cook them with plenty of boiled potatoes as the West Highlanders do; but the longer they have been in salt the longer you have to soak them, and this often amounts to forty-eight hours. And then they are still not very nice, at least not for soft southerners. Pickled herring is far more pleasant to eat. Pickling herring To pickle herring soak the salt herring (or mackerel or whatever) for twenty-four hours, and lay it in vinegar for at least a