Dear Seafoodies

I hope the beginning of the year has seen you well and please may I offer a warm welcome to those who have recently subscribed.  

First of all, one of the little projects I've had an awful lot of fun working on recently with a couple of very talented pals has been a short promotional video that went out on Instagram and Facebook showcasing, of course, Bute Street Seafoodie's seasonal recipes for local, sustainable UK seafood, but also the incredible creativity and expertise of Mira Thorp in the design and production of the video, and Daniel Hewson's just exhaustive musical genius.  You can watch the video by clicking the next image, but do please have a look at more of their work using the links above:

By the way! It turns out that patience and persistence has paid off and Bute Street Seafoodie is now rising up the scale of the Googlometer.  Try typing "Goan Lobster" into Google and see who comes up top!  "Crab Tian" is not doing badly either!

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As 2020 came to a close, Bute Street Seafoodie was looking to broader horizons - all of them very much still within, or on, the shores of the UK and all very much champions of the local, seasonal and sustainable principles that Bute Street Seafoodie is keen to give a big vote of support for.  There have been a few of these that have come into view, so rather than try to get all the news out in one go, I thought it better to focus on each new producer one newsletter at a time.  Nobody wants too much good news in one go now, do they?

As luck would have it a new farmers' market launched nearby, just off High Street Kensington, toward the end of last year and that brought with it the opportunity to source UK seafood from another local, small-scale fishing operation, that of Martin Yorwarth, out of Newhaven in East Sussex.  Martin comes from a family who have been in the fishing industry for over 200 years and the waters he has fished since 1986 are, as he describes them, fertile "ground", being the confluence of the North Sea and the English Channel.  And with that comes to the Bute Street Seafoodie kitchen a wider variety of species available for a greater period of time.  Species notably including lemon sole, monkfish, John Dory, herring (currently out-of-season), squid, whiting and horse mackerel (scad).  He's also been bringing an abundance of spider crab on a regular basis - but that leads me to digress in the direction of quite an interesting and topical question...

I'm sure many of you will have seen in the recent news that spider crab is being rebranded "Cornish King Crab".  Apparently the word "spider" puts British people off eating these things, despite the fact that you can buy them in your local farmers' market, straight out of the water, for less than £5/kg but, when cooked, would have to pay €35/kg or more in a restaurant for exactly the same beast after it has travelled for several days to rendez-vous with you on your holiday in Spain (if you can remember such a holiday by now).  And similarly megrim sole are going to be called "Cornish Sole" because the syllable "grim" is a deterrent!?  Although it worked wonders when pilchards, which are largely caught in Cornish waters (as are megrim), were rebranded "Cornish Sardines", what are we now supposed to call Cornish King Crab that come from the Dorset or East Sussex fisheries that I get mine?  Hmmm!?

Alongside his fishing operation, Yorwarth has also been running a smoke house for 15+ years and I must say his smoked sprats are a delight - my father and I devoured them at Christmas.  We'll take a look at some smoked fish recipes next time but, for now, some recipes featuring produce sourced from Yorwarth are (images clockwise from top-left):

• Lemon Sole with Lemon Thyme and Lemon: Little more than a bake-in-a-bag of a tasty and fresh piece of fish with some flavourful ingredients, and minimal washing-up!
• Polpette di Pesce al Sugo: Delicately flavoured fish balls made from minced whiting and herbs and poached in a simple (tinned) tomato sauce.  A really good way of using abundant and affordable whiting in my view.  I'd like to thank My Pinch of Italy for discussions on the cooking of this dish.
• Squid Bhajias: Something of a cross between what we call an "onion bhaji" and the ubiquitous Spanish-holiday crispy-fried squid.  I'm very grateful to the gentleman and genius that is Cyrus Todiwala OBE for his valuable comments as this dish came to be.
• Beer-Battered Whiting (and Chips): Another excellent but traditional way to enjoy whiting, this time a whole, skinned fillet coated in a very simple and effective beer-batter recipe that came from a real seafood expert, Mike Warner.  Mushy peas (home-made) of course!

Meanwhile, in the farmers' market of the birthplace of Bute Street Seafoodie, there has been a particularly good supply of pollack and black bream.  In fact there was a shoal of wild gilt-head that found its way to the market in January which brought me to revive (and vigorously revise) the second of the following two, both extremely seasonal, recipes (images left to right):

• Lemon and Parsley Crusted Pollack, Celeriac Purée and Crispy Kale: A recipe I was kindly lent by an Instagram "colleague", Everyday Fabulous Food, originally written for cod, but as soon as I saw it, couldn't resist adapting for pollack while we were getting them so regularly in the market.
• Sea Bream, Orange and Tarragon Sauce, Fennel Chips: A Gary Rhodes (RIP, genius) number which I never got on with in its original form.  With a bit of rejigging I've turned it into something I will now be making regularly (with the original gilt-head or my preferred black bream), and if nothing else, the fennel chips are unbelievable - even if you don't like fennel, I'd hazard to suggest!

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted a touch of restyling (or styling, if we're honest!) of the Bute Street Seafoodie logo.  I'm quietly(ish) pleased with this little bit of creativity that occasionally befalls me and it was quite fun to dig around to discover what typeface was used in the local street signs.  It turns out, as I always believe it does, if you ask the right people nicely, you get to find out what you want to know.

As ever, please do forward this message on to your friends and fellow seafoodies and invite them to get in touch or subscribe or to follow @butestseafoodie on Instagram, and Facebook (the 2021 Twit-job looks to be getting a very established place on the back-burner!). 

May I wish everyone a continued safe and healthy route to the "new different" lockless-down that we are hopefully edging our way towards, and I'll be in touch again a bit sooner than I have been recently.

Best fishes

Bute Street Seafoodie

butestseafoodie@gmail.com

www.butestseafoodie.com