Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - The River Cottage Fish Book

Copyright 2007 by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher
Photographs copyright 2007 by Simon Wheeler
Additional photography copyright 2007 by Paul Quagliana, Marie Derme, and other contributors ()

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Originally published in slightly different form in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, in 2007

First Ten Speed Press printing, 2012

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fearnley-Whittingstall, Hugh.
The River Cottage fish book : the definitive guide to sourcing and cooking sustainable fish and shellfish / Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher ; photography by Simon Wheeler ; additional photography by Paul Quagliana and Marie Derme Fisher. 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Cooking (Fish) 2. Cooking (Shellfish) 3. Cooking (Seafood) 4. FishesGreat Britain. I. Fisher, Nick, 1953- II. Title.
TX747.F38 2012
641.692dc23
2011038382

eISBN: 978-1-60774-063-6

Project editor: Janet Illsley
Cover design: Chloe Rawlins
Photography: Simon Wheeler

v3.1

For Oscar and his godfather, Charlie, my two other favorite fishing companions. HF-W

For my favorite fish eaters, Helen, Rory, Rex, Patrick, Kitty, and Spike. NF

We both love fish. And that is the overriding reason we have written this book. As anglers, cooks, and (very amateur) naturalists, weve got fish under our skin. Its very hardand rather stressfulto imagine life without them.

Over the years weve found all kinds of ways to scratch our fish itch: goldfish in a bowl, visits to aquariums, goggling at Jacques Cousteau on the telly, learning first to snorkel and then to scuba dive. Such enthusiasms have come and gone, but two have always been a constant: catching fish and eating them.

Between us, we have caught and cooked many fish. We have, of course, also caught a fair few that we havent cooked, and cooked countless others that we havent caught. But we are happiest when these two pursuits collide and we get to consume a fish that we have personally pulled from the deep. For both of us, our passion for fish as quarry and food began at an early age.

Hughs first fishing expedition occurred at the age of six, when his dad took him to a stream in Richmond Park, armed with a bamboo cane, a length of string, a bent pin, and a slice of bread. They actually caught a fish! Back home with his Observers Book of Fishes, Hugh identified the catch as a mackerel, noting that this was a fish that was meant to live in the sea.

Being omniscient, his dad naturally had a convincing explanation: Er, it must have decided to swim up from the sealike a salmon That was more than good enough for the young Hugh. There was no reason to be suspicious. After all, he had lifted the fish from the stream with his own hands, and watched his father knock it several times on the head with his own eyes.

Hughs mum fried the mackerel in butter and served it with a slice of lemon. It was the first fish Hugh had ever eaten that wasnt finger shaped, coated in bread crumbs, and doused in ketchupand he enjoyed it very much indeed.

It was ten years before the sorry truth came out. Seeing his teenage son swearing blind to some disbelieving friends that he had once caught a mackerel in a London park with a lump of Mothers Pride on a bent pin, Hughs dad was moved to a guilty confession. He came clean about the trip to the fishmongers; the sleight of hand that slipped the fish onto the hook as Hugh was sent behind a bush for a much-needed pee; the ritual dispatch of a fish that had, in fact, already been dead for two days

Hugh was a little disillusioned to discover the deceit but, being sixteen, soon found other things to strop about. In the end he is, of course, eternally grateful to his dad. Grateful to be hooked on fishing, and hooked on fish.

Nick grew up in inner-city Glasgow. Other than breaking his foot with a paving stone and being made to eat mud pies by his two bossy big sisters, he doesnt remember much about being five. But what he can remember in uncanny detail is sitting on the end of a rock pier in Millport one sunny summer afternoon, holding a Winfield toy rod, and catching his first totally unaided fish.

It was a wrasse. A purply blue, mottled, spiny-finned ballan wrasse, with buck teeth and huge, rubbery lips. The fight between big fish and tiny rod had been a long one; many dads crowded round, eager to help Nick land the fish. But he never did let go of that rod. Instead he dragged the wrasse up the wall on to the pier and whacked it on the head with a gaff handle.

Sadly, Nick never got to eat his first fish. In the 1960s, any fish that had the temerity not to be born a cod or a haddock was deemed inedible. On the way back to their caravan, Nicks dad told him to throw the fish on the beach for the seagulls. As they walked away, the beautiful creature that had lived underwater with such style and exuberance lay dead, dull and graying, speckled with grit, waiting to be pulled apart by herring gulls.

Much as he loved fishing from the start, loved eating fish, and loved the tackle, the boats, the danger, and the sheer manliness of it all, what Nick realized at that moment was that there are right ways to treat fish, and there are wrong ways.

For many years, both of us carried around a kind of fat store of joy, based on happy fishy memories. Anything to do with fish was always good. Any opportunity to go fishing was always gratefully taken. And just about any piece of fish offered on a plate was gratefully devoured.

Most of the time, fish still work that simple magic for us. But they have also muscled in on our work livesmeaning that, now and again, we find ourselves taking fish and fishing quite seriously. Weve both written and broadcast about themNick extensively, Hugh more incidentallyand it was this shared professional interest that first brought us together. Hugh was an avid fan of Nicks Channel Four series, Screaming Reels, and decided to stalk Nick with a view to collaborating on some fishy telly. We met, we talked, we went fishing (Hugh caught nothing, Nick a small roach) and, as we became friends, we let the telly idea drop. We enjoyed being fishing buddies too much to let work get in the way.