Rick Stein - Rick Steins Seafood Lovers Guide

Rick Stein is a well-loved and respected chef, TV presenter and author who has produced an array of award-winning books and television series, including Rick Steins Seafood, Seafood Lovers Guide, Taste of the Sea, Food Heroes, French Odyssey, Mediterranean Escapes, Coast to Coast and Far Eastern Odyssey. All of his books and programmes show a commitment to good-quality produce, sustainable fishing and good husbandry.

Rick owns four restaurants, a delicatessen, a patisserie, a seafood cookery school and forty guest bedrooms in the small fishing port of Padstow, Cornwall. In 2003, Rick was awarded an OBE for services to West Country Tourism. He divides his time between Padstow and Australia, which he regards as his second home.

For Jill, Edward, Jack and Charles

Dont it always seem to go that you dont know what youve got till its gone

JONI MITCHELL, Big Yellow Taxi

Im humbled, after travelling around the world looking at beautiful sunsets on beaches without end and wandering through exotic markets filled with fish and spices, I thought a journey around our own coast would be mundane. How wrong could I have been? I have spent much of the last two years on a series of trips around the coast of the British Isles and Ireland looking for the best seafood, where to buy it and eat it and how it is caught. I found much to enjoy and much to depress me but above all I found a long coastline of matchless beauty. From the rustling shingle beaches along the south coast of England to the soaring cliffs silhouetted against a cold northern sky off the Shetlands, and the falling off the edge of the world feel on lonely stretches of sand in Connemara, these sceptred islands are truly precious stones set in a silver sea.

The people who fish around the coast too are special, gritty, determined, intelligent and stoical people plying a dangerous and fast-declining trade as our fishing stocks are ever more depleted. The terrible conundrum of fishing the hunter chasing vanishing prey tinged everywhere I went with melancholy.

But there was hope too, clear signs that a change in attitude is afoot and moments of great joy finding hardly known fish that tasted so good and recipes that astonished me.

I feel I have to justify my exuberance for seafood at a time when its very existence is threatened by over-exploitation. My answer is that the more we love seafood and the more we know about it, the greater will be our diligence in preserving it and the more we will prefer to eat it ourselves rather than see it trucked overland to the fish markets of Spain and France. Theres no reason why fish conservation shouldnt work. I just have this nagging doubt that it wont if we dont care enough.

So this is my present effort to fight the cause a book designed to take you to the best seafood in Britain and Ireland. Its not been a thoroughly exhilarating trip. I was moved at one stage to suggest that there are probably more good seafood restaurants in Brittany than on the coasts of these islands. Theres too much showy cooking which falls flat, not enough sensible reliance on good local seafood plainly cooked. However, there are some very good restaurants and suppliers out there, and signs that things are getting better.

Finally, I must stress that the guide is a personal not comprehensive selection of the best among fishmongers, fish processors and restaurants. Those places not in the book are not necessarily excluded because they werent good enough, I may just not have been there. Ive devoted my attention to the coast, to anywhere within the sound of seagulls. At the end of the listings for each region Ive also included some restaurants where fish is not a speciality, but where I feel they still do it extremely well. So, Ive broken the rules a bit, but generally I feel that there is something particularly exciting about finding good seafood by the sea.

THE CHURNING FRENZY OF THE SEA IN WINTER IS ROMANTIC AND STIRRING BUT THESE ARE DANGEROUS TIMES FOR FISHERMEN.

I set out on a bleak, bitingly cold Decembers afternoon, the wind cutting through my jersey, to walk that part of the coastline I know best, just south of Padstow. I started near Trevose Head down from my old house, looking out towards the dark-grey jagged rocks called the Quies, where we fish for mackerel on balmy summer days. Even the dog looked a bit uncertain, with the wind blowing his fur hard against him, though happy to be taken for a walk. I had a question to answer to myself. Every time I get off the plane in Australia I go straight down on to the beach in Manly and its warm, even if its raining, its warm and the sea smells warm, I always think, why would anyone want to live anywhere else than that comfortable part of the world?

SAFELY HOME TO NEWLYN, CORNWALL.THE VIEW FROM THE TOP: THROUGH MISTY DAYS AND LONG DARK NIGHTS THE TREVOSE HEAD LIGHTHOUSE, 250 FT ABOVE SEA-LEVEL, WARNS SHIPPING OF THE TREACHEROUS ROCKS BENEATH THE SWIRLING SEA.

The dog and I went down the sandy tamarisk-fringed lane to Boobies Bay with the surf getting louder and louder, glimpses of the slate-blue sea and the smell of cold salt. The surf was smashing over the rocks and spume blowing over the thick tufts of grass. Everyone had gone home from the summer and left the spray and me, so it seemed. I passed the rocky beach where we used to collect cowrie shells and coloured glass as children and when my boys were young we did the same fifty pence for a piece of rare blue glass and much wailing when they brought blue plastic and it wouldnt do. In the watercress-covered stream above the beach, there was some grey polystyrene moulded into pebble shapes by the sea, made almost natural. I walked on up to Trevose Head. I dreaded this part of the walk because I had to pass a deep, round hole near the cliffs edge caused by the erosion of soft strata of rock by the sea. As usual, I found myself veering a long way from the edge yet still with an anxious fascination to go closer and peer down into the sickening depth.

The answer to my question was clear; the comfort of a warm climate with plenty of sun is not, quite, enough. I realized I like the smell of the wind in winter; I like the cloudy gloom of an early darkening afternoon just before Christmas. If theres such a thing as collective memory this sort of experience is where it lies, a mutual understanding in all of us who inhabit these cold northerly islands, a sense of belonging. The Cornish have an expression where you belong to be.

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