A dab hand! (chortle chortle)

Ah I think there must be endless fish and fishing related puns out there. Despite being too embarrassed to bring myself to listen to my 2 minutes on the radio, I was secretly quite pleased with myself for getting in a comment about the cod stocks being battered. Not enough credit given for that little gem.

So I was right, fish is going to be one of the perks of my job! I went to Cranston's Food Hall in Penrith on Saturday to collect business cards from The Fish Cellar's little counter there. (By the way if you see me on a show stand this summer ask me for the business cards I'm carrying for some of our fishmongers - they've got a discount on them). I got talking to the guys about dab - they're selling them for a pound a fish, it's mad really, so cheap, and apparently marking them as "only £1.00" (that old chestnut) is the only way they can sell them; people won't buy dab if it's marked with the equivalent price per kg. Why is that? I heard one customer ask if they were plaice. They weren't, so she didn't buy them. So it would seem that we have to recognise the name of the fish before we'll buy it? In that case, I will write 'dab' every other sentence, and by the time you have finished reading this you can never again avoid buying dab because you haven't heard of it. You may also be due an award in the category of "persistent reading of a blog about fish".
Dab. I'm going to use it as a paragraph separator, brilliant.
So I was going to buy a dab, to prove a massive point to the world, but The Fish Cellar gents donated one to me without charge bless them. I am in the process of reading The River Cottage Sea Fishing volume, and the fishing legend author has included a recipe for flatfish such as dab, which essentially goes like this: "put it under a hot grill for five minutes". I'm not kidding. So I did! Here is a picture of the result:

I kid you not, it was awesome. Unbelievable. Just call me Delia. And the bones were not a problem, I promise. The meat (do you call cooked fish "meat"??) just lifts off the study skeleton and you can eat the skin, it has almost got no consistency at all.
Dab.
Try it, or another species of largely ignored but very tasty flatfish, I'll even come round and cook it for you, although I predict that my 'self-appointed expert' help with turning the grill on high and putting the fish underneath it will not be necessary. The greater challenge would actually be opening the bag of pre-picked, pre-washed and pre-packed salad. I am trying to grow my own lettuces but so far I am only succeeding in boosting the local slug population....
DAB.