Gordon 'Kymer Monkfish' Ramsey plus Monty 'ex-Marine' Halls? Well, if you insist.

Well I feel all backed up. Several things have been going on that I would like to blog about and they're weighing me down! I could do with getting at least one out tonight, just to lighten the load...

This first one highlights two very important issues - the difficulty of choosing fish and the smallness of my brain.

So I've been out mystery-shopping for fish a little bit recently, just dabbling, dipping my toe in. It has been really interesting but I'm going to have to be quite careful as I reveal the findings, because although it is hardly 'revealing' unless I tell you where I was shopping, I'm trumpeting around in a mine-field here and if I'm not careful I'll trump in the wrong ear and everyone will be upset. And a mine will go off.

This story, as you will see, fails to be any real form of mystery-shopping and is just about me being incompetent, so there is actually no need to conceal the name of this particular store. But hell I'm in character now. I'm the Fish Lady (I have actually been called that) and to make sure there's absolutely no way you'll be able to work out the supermarket in question in a million billion years, lets call it Cubicles.

Now Cubicles is a small supermarket chain well-known to us northerners and, on its website, Cubicles claims to have a preference for fish landed locally. I'm not sure what Cubicles likes best about local seafood, but I don't think that it can be stocking and selling it in its stores, otherwise you'd think it would...


Cubicles does use a local supplier however, and thus causes pain in my brain when I try to equate this support of a local business with the lack of actual local fish. Anyway this is not the crux of the story (really, it's not. I know, it was a long introduction). I like Cubicles and I will look into that little hiccup a little more and report back at a later time.


I did intend to 'mystery-shop' Cubicles, but when I got there the guy who ran over to help me (I mean he literally sprinted) was not the fish guy, the fish guy had gone home (he probably sprinted as well - out the door when he saw the Fish Lady coming...). So this shining example of customer service did his absolute best to help me, but it was really very unfair as the fish counter was clearly not his forte (when I asked to see the gills of one particular fish, he presented me with the flap of the belly where the guts had been pulled out. This made me want to give him a hug). So then I didn't know what to do. I had planned to try some new fish, as is my wont to tell everyone else to do, and had imagined making myself a risotto or a paella because I still need to try clams, winkles and cockles, and thought I should have a go at cooking with mussels and squid too. But Cubicles didn't have any of the above. This is not a criticism at all but it did leave me floundering...( mwah ahahahah). What to get what to get what to get????

And this is when the panic set in. Fish counter insanity. I broke out in a metaphorical sweat and all the information on all the fish labels swam before my eyes. All the different methods, different sources, different species. I considered getting a whole fish, practicing my filleting skills and making a fish stock with the bits (panic subsides a little). Oh mother of pearl I don't have a filleting knife! (Panic returns ten fold!). There's no perfect fish, there's no perfect fish. So which one do I buy? Will another fish type go into a risotto? Or should I make something else? But what? And what ingredients do I have in? Hang on I'm in a supermarket (called Cubicles), I can buy ingredients and make anything, ANYTHING! OH MY GOODNESS WHAT SHALL I HAVE FOR MY TEA???

So, in a moment of madness (oh I wish I could say 'clarity', but no...) I bought monkfish. MONKFISH! Of all the fish in all the world... In my defense, it was on offer and thus the only time I could ever buy it without losing my hair over the cost. But a wise man once told me that 'they' only put things on offer when they want to get rid of them. So I have just bought the monkfish that Cubicles wanted to get rid of and for which I have no recipe. But hey at least I can make a comparison of this supermarket monkfish with fishmonger monkfish. NO I CAN'T, I'VE NEVER HAD IT!


What an idiot. Who on earth has a panic attack and ends up with a packet of monkfish and three bottles of wine?? Alright, the wine was in the basket before the panic. But really, what kind of useless example am I?? Blind fish counter panic. Too much to choose from, don't know what I'm cooking, managing to remember all the rules but forgetting in what order of preference to rate them... I'm probably the average 'trying to be concientious' fish shopper, that's who. So if you've ever felt bewildered by the fish counter, which is made infinitely more complex when you're trying to do the right thing by the ocean, then don't worry, apparently it happens to the best of us, and also to me!

Well, at least it's different - I've never bought monkfish before - so am practising what I preach. I also will probably never buy it again unless I marry a rich man, and the chances of me marrying anyone while people openly call me the Fish Lady are probably slim. I'd settle for a tall, handsome marine biologist slash TV presenter.... (that's you, Monty Halls, in case I wasn't clear).

I then went to another supermarket, lets call it Harrisons, watched a demonstration of the World's Sharpest Knife, bought it (who does that??), gave my number to the demonstrator (who does that?? Alright judge and jury, he was a chef and obviously good at demonstrating, demonstrated by the box of knives in my hands), then went home and made Gordon Ramsey's Kymer Monkfish and Vegetable Curry, which might have been the best thing I have ever tasted, and treated my post-traumatic stress with a little (lot) of wine!

And the moral of the tale - be prepared. If you're not comfortable winging it, then have an idea of what dish you're going to make, and a back-up in case of emergencies. Take precautions against fish counter insanity.

Disclaimer: I don't know what a metaphorical sweat is. If anyone out there sweats metaphorically, I'm sorry to hear it.

'Sustainable' sounds more interesting if you say it with a French accent.

So on Friday I was asked a million dollar question by a not-inconsequential person in the UK fishing and seafood industry. Sweat dripped onto my keyboard as a I typed furiously (as in frenziedly, not angrily) to produce an extensive email essay in response to Dr Harman's little question: what do I regard as sustainable?

Call me crazy, but I'd say that Dr Jon Harman, the Business Development Director at Seafish (the authority on seafood in the UK), was not asking the Wild Oceans Project Officer (the authority on babbled radio interviews and laminating pictures of fish) about sustainable fish because he doesn't know and was hoping I could clear it up a bit for him. Nope, nosiree, I'm being tested. I'm also being made to look directly at the elephant in the room which I was enjoying ignoring. In fact, Dr Harman is sitting astride the elephant, waving and flapping its ears up and down, shouting 'look at me on this elephant in this room'. With 25 years of experience on the subject, I'm also pretty sure that Dr Harman has a built-in waffle-ometer which will deftly block my usual escape route. So here I am, manning up to deal with this 'sustainable' elephant head on, and I expect to be a greyer shade of brunette when I come out the other end. (I might also be alone, because unfortunately, unless you are a fish nerd like me, 'sustainable' is actually one of those 'go to sleep immediately' words. Sustaina... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz).


I know that I use 'sustainable-seafood' to describe the project all the time, but sometimes we say things we don't precisely mean and it's ok because it is close enough to the truth and is much simpler than using the full complex description which would bore people to death everytime you talk about fish, and then I'd be wanted for homicide.

Average Joe: 'Hi Lindsay, really quick question - is this fish sustainable?'
Me: 'Hi Joe, great question. I could just answer yes or no, but I fear that to be accurate I must tell you that the literal sustainability of any individual fish is not enough to say whether or not it is ethical to ....Joe, are you ok? Joe?!'
Average Joe: 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....*silence*' 
Joe's friend, Ordinary Eric: 'You bored Joe to death! Boring Lindsay you're the worst.'


Right, just like pulling off a plaster, here we go, Boring Lindsay's definition of sustainable:
A fishery is sustainable if the biomass of the stock lost to fishing plus natural mortality is not greater than the biomass recruited to the stock through reproduction and growth.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So don't take too much of the target fish and you can keep fishing indefinitely, right? Sustainability in a nutshell and I'm sure the Oxford Dictionary people would be happy with that.
Knock knock.
'Who's there?'
'A conservationist'
'A conservationist who?'
'A conservationist who says that we should consider more than only the target species before saying a fish is ok to eat'.
'It's Boring Lindsay, don't let her in!'

So there's also non-target fish, caught unintentionally when fishing for the target species. You're sustainably fishing for John and you accidentally catch Dave. These are, thanks to Hughie FW, well-known firstly as by-catch, secondly as discards if and when they are well, discarded. By definition alone, a fishery wouldn't have to give a rat's bottom about these 'by-catch' Daves, it could still be 'sustainably' fishing the target Johns. A bit wrong, eh.

Ha I'm not quite done. Then what about damage to the marine habitat? I won't go into this now, but surely we should consider whether or not a fishing method is mean to the sea floor before we make it our friend? Not really, according solely to the literal definition of sustainability.

Ultimately here is my confession: I call Wild Oceans 'a sustainable seafood project' but rather than saying:
'go and eat fish that are reproducing at a greater rate than they are being caught' (for which I would probably get punched for being an idiot, and deserve it)
I say:
'go and eat locally-sourced fish, line-caught fish and a wide variety of fish'
because it is easy to go out there and actually do, plus it considers a few of the wider impacts that 'sustainability' alone doesn't, including the Cumbrian fishing economy. (For this I expect to be hugged for being practical. Still waiting though...)
 
So Wild Oceans is not exactly a sustainable-seafood project, but its close enough....
Hel-loooo? Anyone still out there?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
*Embarrassed cough. Lindsay goes home by herself*

Boring Lindsay would like to apologise to any Joes, Daves, Johns, Erics and elephants who may have been offended in the making of this post.