Dear Seafoodies Happy new year! To some, the year begins in "Veganuary" and may they enjoy and benefit from their culinary plantventure with all the great (and possibly questionable) things that go with it. I, for one, can’t yet see the day when I could go without some fish or meat at some point during the week (how about "Fishanuary"?), but I’m certainly one amongst the growing crowd reducing the meat and upping the veg. Regular readers will know that I have been subscribing to a veg box scheme (Riverford) for years, and I recently had a recipe published on their website, one for a rather unusual vegetable. See if you can find it – look up “Pain de Sucre”. As in the last couple of years, I spent New Year in Cornwall with my very dear friend and her two lovely daughters (in fact, on the flight there, I met a chap in his late forties who a few years ago switched from booze, fags and strokes to veganism, and now runs Ultra-Marathons!). One of the girls is, at 10 years old, a keen cook, talented with it, and I am confident, a future star. We cooked up a Katsu curry which will soon get posted, that good was it. |
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Whenever I visit this friend in Cornwall I feel that my visit would be incomplete without a meal at the nearby Pandora Inn. Whilst their menu is superb (and their scampi and their mussels are outstanding!), it’s their “Specials Board” where I think they excel. Nearly every time I’ve been I’ve chosen a fish dish from their specials because they exemplify everything a seafoodie hopes to find. This New Year’s Day lunchtime I was torn between: - Pan-seared grey mullet, Jerusalem artichoke velouté, greens and potatoes
- Pan-seared brill, fondant potato, tenderstem broccoli, fennel cream sauce
You just can’t get more seasonal, sustainable and local dishes than those! And how often do you see grey mullet on a menu? I will happily say that a dish of pollack I ate there in the past is the best pollack dish I have ever had. This time I chose the brill (partly because the temptation of the grey mullet dish had to be tempered by the anxiety over the well-known, undesirable effects of the Jerusalem artichokes), a fish we regularly see on the stall, but one I personally don't buy that often. During my stay we didn’t find crab on any menus, and we were keen for a Cornish crab salad (her) or bap (me). I asked one of the restaurateurs about the state of crab fishing and stocks on our south coast, and the response was nothing but the worrying one Les wrote to us about back in February last year. On the upside, the Lobster Hatchery seems to be in full force at the current time of blogging. Meanwhile, two species native to Cornwall that continue to arouse my intrigue are hake and megrim sole. You can find them on menus locally but as far as I can see, the vast majority of the catch is exported. Shame. Why don't we just eat it? |
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A few ideas for what might appeal in the current month, all in season, could include (images clockwise from top-left): |
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