I've got one hand in my pocket

And the other one is holding a plate of smoked mackerel with gougons of flounder. Mmm thanks ever so much to Jaid Smallman from the Wordsworth Hotel in Grasmere, my chef and saviour for the weekend at Country Fest - I'm not kidding about saviour, this guy fed the five thousand with just a few fish and didn't even need the loaves to eke it out.

So last week we had chef Nick Martin making fantastic pan-fried coley at Cumbria Wildlife Trust's Garden Bonanza. Not intimidated by the rain and 50 mph gusts, we had a great day and Nick's delicious coley went down an absolute storm (hehe). Despite being snubbed for years and fed only to cats as a punishment, coley is very cod-like, but cheaper and with healthier stocks. It is also called saithe and coalfish and while it is sometimes landed locally you're more likely to see it from the North Sea or northeast Arctic. Never mind, but look for line-caught if you can get it.

In preparation for Country Fest, Jaid had me reaching for the gin (alright so I was already slicing the lime) when he sent over a recipe which included preserved lemons - "dead simple to make at home" he says, "really?" I say, "yes" he says, "only takes three weeks" - and another which required cooking potatoes 'sous vide'. Big curly head in hands, I enquired what one might substitute for preserved lemons, just in case one had run out... thank god for capers. And it turns out that while a fine-dining chef can sous vide his way through life, you or I can roast. The sauce, I mean source, of all this fanciness? Inter-chef competition! Apparently chefs like to out-chef each other. My shrimp is bigger than your shrimp...

I digress.... so Country Fest was a rip-roaring success. Kendal Fish and Seafoods donated line-caught Cornish smoked mackerel and Jaid's (sans sous vide!) recipe for it was simple and tasted incredible. What a fantastic little British fish; mackerel laugh in the face of fishing pressure that would send a cod swimming into the depths of decline and we can definitely afford to eat a few more of these bad boys, particularly if you can get line-caught champs. Jaid's flounder dish was also totally brilliant (I know, I ate a lot of it). More commonly known as a fluke, flounder is a flatfish, BFF to Ariel the Mermaid and is an example of a local (Irish Sea and UK-wide) fish that we don't see on our menus (or anywhere else) very often. Or ever, unless you like to hang around lobster pots, since in Cumbria it is only really used as lobster bait. Although flounder can be caught by foot (no joke), they will mostly be trawled or possibly caught in gill nets; as a delicious and under-exploited local fish, it's definitely worth a try (avoiding beam trawled if you can - otter trawled is preferable).

During the course of the weekend I spoke to 324 people at the Cumbria Wildlife Trust stand, attested to by the clicker counter I keep in my pocket to track these things. If you do find yourself talking to me at a show this summer please don't be put off if I have one hand in my pocket and appear very interested in its contents!

Highlight of the weekend? Not Martin Platt from Coronation Street selling cheese in the next tent (or his Gordon Ramsay hair do), not the pygmy goats, the close proximity of the wine-tasting stand, or the three-for-the-price-of-less-than-one banana cake I got from the Ginger Bakers. Nope, it would have to be the little girl who said 'Mummy, can you make this at home?". Score! Wild Oceans 1, fish fingers 0.