Seafood Journey E-Book

Ghillie Basan

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 317

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Scotland has some of the best seafood in the world, so we why don't we eat more of it? Why don't we highlight the bounty of our seas and the people who fish, produce, sell, preserve and cook it?Acclaimed cooker writer Ghillie Basan embarks on a journey around Scotland's coastline and over to the islands to capture the essence of our nation's seafood through the stories of fisherman, farmers, artisan smokers and curers, boat builders and net makers, creels and shacks, skin tanners and age-old traditions.In addition, she offers 90 original recipes showcasing the wonderful produce she encounters on her journeys to all parts of the country.Features a foreword by Gary Maclean, winner of MasterChef: The Professionals

Leseprobe

Ghillie Başan has written more than fifty books on different culinary cultures which, over the last forty years, have been shortlisted and have won a variety of awards. Her recent book, on Lebanese cooking, won Best in the World in the Gourmand International Cookbook Awards 2021 and A Taste of the Highlands was shortlisted for the Guild of Food Writers Award 2022. Her food and travel articles have appeared in a huge variety of newspapers, including the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, and magazines such as BBC Good Food and Delicious. As a broadcaster she has presented and contributed to many BBC radio programmes and produces her own podcast, Spirit & Spice. Her book of the same name gives a unique insight into both whisky and food pairing, using wild and local produce combined with global spices, and Ghillie’s extraordinary lifestyle in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands, where she runs cookery workshops and interactive whisky and food pairing experiences. Ghillie is also one of Scotland’s Food Tourism Ambassadors and champions local produce.

First published in 2023 byBirlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

EdinburghEH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © Ghillie Başan 2023

The moral right of Ghillie Başan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 78885 645 4

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Mark Blackadder

Food and location photography by Lynne Kennedy. (unless stated otherwise).

Printed and bound by Bell & Bain, Glasgow

Photo credits

p.i (author portrait) Christina Riley; 4: Euan Myles;

5: Samuel Hauenstein Swan; 23: Islay Sea Adventures;

43: Alistair Petrie/Alamy Stock Photo;

44: Alexander Mathieson; 53: India Hobson;

89: Laurence Winram; 91: Lewis Mackenzie;

112: Louis Neate; 120: Gordon Mackay;

152: Susan Malloy; 192, 193 & 227: Mike Guest;

154: Charlene Storey; 224: Paul Watt.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

1. West Coast

2. Skye, Lewis and Harris

3. North-west and North-east Coasts

4. Orkney and Shetland

5. Moray Coast

6. East Coast

Index of Recipes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The journey in this book follows the stories of people associated with the sea and our wonderful fish and shellfish around Scotland’s coastline. It doesn’t venture inland. Yet I live in the Cairngorms National Park and rely hugely on my fishmonger, Pro Fish Scotland, in the inland mountain-resort town of Aviemore. Born out of a random discussion at the dinner table one evening in 2017, Pro Fish Scotland has Lionel Raguenet at the helm. A former fisherman and, when he was 15 years old, the youngest recruit in the French navy, Lionel has 35 years of fish-filleting experience and has managed to pass on both his love of the sea and knowledge of the fishing industry to his wife, two sons, daughter and son-in-law – all of whom work in the business. Only the highest MSC-graded (Marine Stewardship Council) seafood is selected daily from the Peterhead and Shetland markets, then it is processed by Lionel’s sons, Steven and Jimmy, in Dingwall and transported in mobile fish vans by Lionel and his son-in-law, James MacQueen, to remote areas of the Highlands and Moray, and sold in the shop in Aviemore. Along with several other fish vans from places like Buckie and Portsoy, Pro Fish provides rural, inland communities like ours with top-quality fresh fish on a daily basis. Most of the seafood for this book was sourced and supplied by Lionel’s daughter, Stephanie, and his wife, Sylvie – two of the loveliest and most accommodating people you will ever meet. Nothing is too much trouble – the beautiful fish is always sold with a smile, and even a wee cooking tip if you need one. For the different events that we run, my daughter and I, along with many regional restaurants and cafes, rely on Stephanie and Sylvie, so my first big ‘thank you’ goes to the Pro Fish Scotland family. We are lucky to have you!

I would also like to thank all the characters in this book – from salt producers to fishermen, chefs and boat builders – who have shared their stories with me so generously. Their collaborative goodwill and passion for the fishing industry and our amazing seafood is a joy to share. I have learnt a lot on my journey and I have gained a profound respect for everyone involved, so my thanks come sincerely from the bottom of my heart. Amongst these characters is food writer, Liz Ashworth, who introduced me to Orkney fishermen and fish merchants, and helped with the chapter on the Moray coast, and Gary Maclean, who agreed to write the Foreword, somewhat in the dark, but who is a passionate national ambassador of Scotland’s seafood.

My thanks also go to the ever-patient managing editor of Birlinn, Andrew Simmons; the editor, Debs Warner, who expertly steered the final stages of the book’s photography and design; the designer, Mark Blackadder, who had to chop and change at my whim but has come up trumps; Anita Joseph, the most helpful and skilled copy editor I have ever worked with; and to my literary agent, the one and only Jenny Brown, the best agent and friend an author can wish for.

I reserve my final thanks for Lynne Kennedy who took the majority of the photographs for this book. She is a skilled wedding and documentary photographer but this was her first food project. I wouldn’t have asked her to come on board if I didn’t believe in her and she proved to be a dream to work with. I hope that this book gives her a platform to shine in the way that she deserves. I would happily work with her again in a heartbeat!

FOREWORD

Gary MacleanSCOTLAND’S NATIONAL CHEF

As a chef, educator and food ambassador, I have been promoting Scottish food at home and abroad for over 30 years, serving the great and the good in the most wonderful locations all over the world and showcasing our produce and food traditions from Singapore to Los Angeles and everywhere in between. The more I travel, the prouder I become of my homeland.

I am particularly fascinated with Scottish fish and shellfish. So much so, I was inspired to open my own seafood restaurant, Creel Caught, after watching the trucks queuing up at Dover as we tried to export our catch into Europe at the beginning of Brexit. I felt that I must do as much as I could to support the industry.

Being a Scottish chef who has worked predominantly in Scotland, it wasn’t until I started to travel and cook in other countries having to use non-Scottish produce that I realised how good our fish and shellfish was. I remember doing a Scottish showcase in a very highend restaurant in Los Angeles. The delivery of seafood had just arrived and the executive chef started to unpack it. His reaction to the quality and standard was amazing, the best he had ever seen. The fish was so good, he actually started carrying samples of it around the kitchen to show it off to the other chefs. It was an incredible experience for me to see food from my country being revered by others and, in a way, seeing our food through their eyes.

Much of my career has been in further education working at the City of Glasgow College teaching the next generation of chefs. I have always felt that it is important as an educator to give as full a picture of the industry as possible. Helping learners understand the food chain and the importance of careful procurement is vital. What I have also seen in the last few years is that new students are asking a lot of questions on provenance and welfare and how their future buying affects the planet. It shows how far we have come in a short space of time.

I have been very lucky in my career to have been able to promote our incredible food in every corner of the world. It’s an easy sell if I am honest. A chef working in a quality establishment anywhere in the world knows that to have the word ‘Scottish’ on his menu shows that they are the best. As I write this, I am waiting to board a plane to Delhi, to attend yet another showcase of our incredible food and culture. I realise that, in Scotland, we are doing something different. We don’t stack it high and sell it cheap, we purely focus on quality. Every plane- and truck-load of Scottish fish and shellfish that leaves our country is telling the story of who we are, one box at a time.

Josh Talbot (p.101) loading boxes of langoustines into the Keltic Seafare van (p.121) in Ullapool.

INTRODUCTION

The last holiday my children and I had with my parents was on Tanera Mor, the largest of the Summer Isles off the north-west coast of Scotland. My father, who was in his late eighties at the time, had seen an article in the newspaper about the new island owner who had renovated some of the cottages to rent.

My father had fond memories of his honeymoon there; my mother didn’t. In fact, I’m surprised they remained married. The boat had dropped them off at the old, disused herring station with a Border terrier pup that had been given to them as a wedding present and the skipper said he would pick them up the next day. My father had brought my mother to the island to camp and pitched the tent on the only bit of flat grassy ground near the harbour. He was in his element. He had always camped as a boy and, ever since travelling the world as the doctor on a Blue Funnel Line merchant ship, he had developed a love for the sea, boats and fishing. A wild storm began to brew, but he was in the water looking for crabs to cook for his new wife. My mother had never camped and the heavens opened with such torrential rain that their tent was flooded and hundreds of earwigs took refuge on the inside which kept Tinker, the pup, busy as she tried to eat them. Adding to my mother’s misery, the boat couldn’t return to pick them up for four days.

My children and I helped my elderly father walk along the path from the cottage to the old herring station so he could show us where they had camped. They laughed at my mother’s dramatic account of her miserable honeymoon – one could laugh because my father did redeem himself the following year by taking her to Venice and they remained happily married for 56 years – and were keen to see where he had pitched the tent and to look for crabs. Arriving at the roofless herring station which dates back to 1784 and the little harbour created for the boats to land the fish, my father told my children about the glorious days of the herring boom that began in the late 1800s and lasted until the early nineteenth century.

It was an extraordinary moment in Scotland’s fishing history, heralding the construction of harbours, herring stations and saltpans. Salt was needed in vast quantities to preserve the herring in barrels that were transported to places like Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia. The fishermen would follow the shoals through summer months when they were at their fattest, around the Hebrides and the west coast, around Orkney and Shetland, and the whole length of the east coast. Young girls from the fishing villages, the ‘herring lassies’, would follow the boats to gut and pack the ‘silver darlings’ in the salt. It was hard, physical work and the girls had to make cloth bandages to try to prevent the salt from getting into the cuts and scratches on their hands. They were earning a wage, which was unusual at that time, and there was fun to be had with dancing and music and, in some cases, the meeting of future husbands. According to SCOSHH (scottishherring.org), by the 1900s, the Scottish herring industry had become the largest in Europe, producing over 2 million barrels and employing over 35,000 people.

Ten years after that holiday in the Summer Isles, I was hosting a group from Sweden on a Whisky Food Safari, a whisky and food pairing experience that I host at my home in the Cairngorms, and one of the tasters was a big, juicy, fresh scallop from the west coast. The leader of the group was delighted. He and several of his friends travel the world as shellfish enthusiasts and will go as far as Spain, California and Indonesia to get ‘the best’. But the best is here, I enthused, and pointed out that the shellfish he had in Spain probably came from Scotland anyway. Regrettably, the Swede’s past experience of Scotland’s shellfish had been disappointing. He had visited the Isle of Skye and couldn’t find any fresh shellfish, herring or cod. Admittedly it was a time when Scottish pubs and restaurants were all too comfortable with the deep-fat fryer and lumps of frozen prawn in breadcrumbs – scampi and chips, scampi and peas, and a sachet of ketchup or tartare sauce on the side. I don’t know how we managed to sink from the glory of the herring days to deep-fried prawns but, I assured my Swedish guest, he would be blown away by the quality and freshness of our seafood now and we have some of the best chefs to prepare it.

During the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, I was struck by a recurring conversation I had in several coastal communities. I was travelling up and down the west coast between the lockdowns, writing my book, A Taste of the Highlands, and kept meeting locals who were enjoying shellfish for the first time. Some felt they were living like kings with lobster on the table several times a week; others were unsure what to do with it. All of them had been used to the landed catch from the waters around Mull, Skye and Ullapool being loaded straight onto lorries heading to London, France and Spain while they bought haddock, prawns and dressed crab from the fish vans that came all the way from the east coast. It is a dynamic that is difficult to comprehend, with laws and quotas regarding what a boat can and cannot land.

At the end of filming Appetite for Adventure (p.96), we enjoyed Cape Wrath Oysters (p.117) on the beach in Durness.

So, when I started writing this book, I had these locals in mind. In Scotland, we have more coastline than any other part of the UK. Seafood is one of our biggest exports, and while it is important to showcase Scotland as a global seafood destination it is also important for those of us who live in Scotland to enjoy eating more fish and shellfish and to be inventive with it. Since the pandemic and Brexit, there have been positive changes for the home market as some fishermen and fish farmers have switched to selling solely to the local communities and restaurants whilst others are holding back enough for locals before the rest goes to export. The raft of guidelines and quotas often don’t make sense to the fishermen, especially when they see premium fish ending up as bait. The recurring conversation I was having while writing this book, two years later, switched to boats going out of business and the industry dying due to unrealistic regulations. Most fishermen go to sea because they love it and see it as a way of life, they said, but the fun was being sucked out of it.

Bally Philp on his boat, Nemesis BRD 115, Skye.

On my journey around the coast I gained such respect for our fishermen and cemented my appreciation of the quality of our seafood. In my imagination, I followed in the wake of the herring boats and herring lassies, starting in Ayr in the south where the wind is being harnessed to produce salt from the seawater, to the Western Isles, up the coast to Orkney and Shetland, and down the east coast to Fife and East Lothian to meet people whose lives are associated with the sea. I met not just fishermen, but salt producers, shellfish farmers, seaweed harvesters and foragers, creel makers, boat makers, fish merchants and several seafood chefs. The resulting stories provide a potted picture of our coastal communities today, the challenges they face and the lives they lead in order to provide us with the wonderful products of the sea.

There are some traditional recipes amongst the modern and multicultural ones. They reflect the society we live in and the way we often draw inspiration from different culinary cultures and our own travels. All the recipes in the book are easy to prepare and have been written with the intention of inspiring you to have a bit of fun with our glorious fish and shellfish. Whether seared in a little butter with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon, or cooked in a spicy broth or a soulful curry, you simply can’t go wrong when the quality of the seafood is so fresh and so good!

Ancestral Coastal Survival

Before heading off on our seafood journey, I thought it would be interesting to hear how our ancestors would have survived by the sea. They would have been skilled foragers and fishermen; they would have understood the seasons and the tides; they would have produced salt and preserved fish in it; and they would have cooked fish over fires and tanned the skins to make leather for shoes and pouches. Many of these ancient skills are being practised again today, so I have asked Patrick McGlinchey, the founder and director of Backwoods Survival School, and the ancestral skills consultant and practitioner for a number of BBC programmes to paint a picture of our ancestors’ lives for us.

The remains of shell middens scattered throughout Scotland give us an insight into some of what they consumed in ancient times, by hugging the shoreline and utilising the resources of the woodland environment in which they thrived. It was a smart strategy, the best of both environments. A day actively hunting in the forest could yield nothing and use up valuable calories whereas a walk on the shoreline would offer them abundant protein without much effort. They were literally standing on their next meal. Working with the ebb and flow of the tide they would gather their daily needs from this living larder and also forage for the seasonal edible and medicinal plants that grow on the shoreline above the high-tide mark.

You’ll find many different habitats on the coastline but it’s the estuaries and rocky shore that yield the rich pickings as far as foraging is concerned. Looking out onto an empty beach at low tide would give you the impression that there was nothing to gather but you’d be wrong, the tell-tale signs of food are everywhere. Empty shells, small holes and strange mounds of coiled sand will indicate what you may find when you dig below the surface: a delicious array of bivalves await the persistent forager – cockles, razor clams, oysters, sand gapers and other tasty clams can be gathered.

The rugged and rocky shoreline offers so much more diversity and goes beyond what would be called survival food. It’s buzzing with an incredible array of life. Most of the brown carpet will be made up of the wrack family, such as bladder, serrated and spiral, which occupies the rocks on the upper and middle zone to the water’s edge. Everything that exists on this exposed shore has a survival strategy, called ‘hold on’. The violence of winter storms would deposit everything onto the land, but the wracks and other seaweeds have evolved to cope with this and anchor themselves to rocks with a strong holdfast. Other delights you may find in this zone are the red and green seaweeds like carrageen, dulse, laver, gut weed and one of my favourites, sea lettuce. Amongst the rocks and wracks you’ll also find limpets, top shells, whelks, mussels, periwinkles, dog whelks and other tasty goodies. Foraging after a storm or spring tide you may find some confused scallops pushed and thrown higher up the shore – a real treat with freshly gathered sorrel. Shellfish, conveniently, come in their own pot and contain enough water to cook them when placed on the hot coals of a fire.

Patrick McGlinchey in his element with freshly caught mackerel.

Traditional harpoons made by Patrick McGlinchey.

Early people had an intimacy with nature and their surroundings. As well as foraging, they crafted different styles of funnel traps made from flexible saplings like willow for catching shore crab in great numbers, and creels could be dropped into deeper water for larger crustaceans like lobster, brown crab, velvet crab, prawns and squats.

They manufactured harpoons, nets, hooks and lines that would allow them to spear and catch fish. The communal effort of creating and using nets, which could be made from many different kinds of natural fibre, could feed the whole tribe and allow for the excess to be preserved by smoking or salting for the leaner times. And early watercraft allowed the people access to the open sea and deep water, enabling them to hunt sea mammals and birds. These early boats could have been made from flexible saplings, which were bound and woven like a stretched-out basket and then covered with mammal skins sewn together with sinew and sealed with fat. A few years ago I made a skin boat similar to this description and it successfully crossed from mainland Scotland to Orkney carrying nine people.

The championing of local seafood begins right at the south-west foot of Scotland, with the annual Oyster Festival in Stranraer celebrating the fishing heritage of the region. This heritage includes the winter spawning of herring off the Ayrshire coast and the skirmishes amongst fishermen in the mid 1800s over the ring netting of the abundant herring in Loch Fyne, an area now known for its seafood fine dining. Off the coast of Ayr and Argyll, there are seafood shacks on the Isles of Bute and Arran, handdived scallops, farmed oysters, whirlpool sea salt on Islay and an award-winning smokehouse on Mull. The coastal road winds past trout and salmon farms through Oban, around Ardnamurchan to Arisaig, and on to the busy harbour of Mallaig, once an important herring port but later Europe’s largest prawn port.

Blackthorn Sea Salt (Ayr)

Until around the sixteenth century, Ayr was the biggest producer of salt in Scotland. With the demand for large quantities to cure and brine the herring in the seventeenth century, the salt producers of the east coast became more organised and slowly the Ayreshire pans became redundant, the last closing in 1874. Now, Gregorie and Whirly Marshall have brought salt back to Ayr by trickling seawater down through a tower of blackthorn branches.

Saltpans Road leads to the harbour and will take you to the Blackthorn Tower with Goatfell and the jagged summits of the Isle of Arran in the distance. It is a structure of great beauty, standing tall, bold and formidable, as if bracing itself to withstand the wild, westcoast gales whipping off the sea at its feet. Up close, it is an architectural wonder, 8 metres high, 25 metres in length, and fashioned out of thousands of intricately woven blackthorn branches stacked at a slight slant. Inside, the wonder continues, with a staircase leading up through the larch and Douglas fir skeleton to a bolted trap door through which you can access a rooftop platform. Outside, it can appear dark and brooding in the mist and rain; inside, the shafts of light can lend a sacred atmosphere enhanced by the tuneful sound of trickling seawater and whistling wind.

As I stand and admire the structure, my mind fills with questions. I ask the fundamental ones first. How did they come up with this idea? And how does it work?

Gregorie, the Master Salter, tells me that in the 1800s his great-great-grandfather founded the family importing business, Peacock Salt, so he has salt ancestry in his blood and has been involved in it all his life. But Gregorie himself trained as an architect. Aha! That accounts for the high tower and attention to detail, but it took him 12 years of research, trials and errors to create this natural structure, which mirrors in miniature the medieval rock salt graduation towers of Germany and Poland. In the early years, those structures were built stacked with straw, but they rotted and fouled the brine. Eventually blackthorn bushels were selected for their hardiness and longevity, lasting seven to ten years before needing to be replaced. Those towers are no longer used to produce salt and have mostly been converted into spas, but their construction gave Gregorie food for thought when he visited them in 2007. The first batch of Blackthorn Sea Salt Flakes was harvested in 2019.

The impressive Blackthorn Tower, with Arran in the distance.

The process is so well thought out, it appears both simple and magical as 26,000 litres of pristine seawater is pumped through a filter into a holding tank and then dribbled into the tower through 54 wooden taps. This is the ‘mother liquor’ and it is often Whirly’s job to monitor the flow. The blackthorn branches are thorny, which stretches out the surface area for the seawater to seep along and trickle down, exposing it to the coastal wind which accelerates the evaporation of the droplets, concentrating the brine. The aim is to evaporate the seawater down to 2,000 litres of concentrated brine with 22 per cent salinity, which Gregorie proudly monitors with his refractometer. This concentrated brine is filtered into two pans, which are like big baths. Where the liquid touches the air, small cube-shaped sodium chloride crystals begin to float on the surface. As they get heavier gravity pulls them down under the liquid and the cubes stretch down into inverted pyramids, which slowly become heavier and sink to the bottom of the pan. These crystals are gathered into a large colander to drain for three days and any leftover brine, which is full of magnesium, goes back into the tower. To finish off the crystals and prevent clumping, they are warmed in an oven for around 90 minutes. The resulting product is a fine fleur de sel – delicate flakes rather than chunky crystals, slightly off-white in colour due to the tannins in the blackthorn branches. On the palate, the mineralrich flakes echo soft notes of the sea with a slight umami hit from the blackthorn. For those lucky enough to visit the tower, Gregorie and Whirly have refurbished an old train carriage for tastings and events – a nod to the history of the area and the port’s original bustle and industry, with wagons carrying coal and salt to and from the pans along the Ayrshire coastline.

The Blackthorn Sea Salt producers, Gregorie and Whirly Marshall.

Fire-cooked Mackerel with Blackthorn Sea Salt and Chimichurri

Somewhere in the region of Loch Fyne, Patrick McGlinchey (p.xv) runs his Beachcomber and Coracle Building courses and, as he has told me that a magical meal for him is mackerel straight out of the sea, cleaned and cooked over a fire, or hot-smoked over coals, I have prepared this recipe with him in mind and added a bowl of herby, garlicky Argentinian chimichurri to dip them into. Set up your fire in a sensible location on the beach and prepare sticks by removing some of the bark and sharpening one end to a point.

Serves 4

For the chimichurri

a small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

a small bunch of fresh oregano, finely chopped

a small bunch of fresh coriander, finely chopped

1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 tbsp red wine, or sherry, vinegar

125ml olive oil

1 tsp Blackthorn Sea Salt

freshly ground black pepper

2 medium-sized, or 4 small, freshly caught mackerel, gutted and cleaned

a handful of Blackthorn Sea Salt

For serving

mini tortilla wraps

4 tbsp homemade, or shop bought, mayonnaise, mixed with the zest of 1 lime or 1 tsp chipotle paste

To make the chimichurri, tip the chopped herbs, chilli and crushed garlic into a bowl. Stir in the vinegar, then pour in the oil gradually, stirring all the time so that it becomes thick. Season well with the salt and pepper and put aside to let the flavours mingle. Just before serving, give it a stir and adjust the flavour to taste with vinegar, olive oil or seasoning.

When your fire is ready, rub some salt over the mackerel and inside the cavity. Push the points of the sharpened sticks down through the mouth and into the body and stab the other end into the ground beside the fire at a distance that enables the fish to cook but avoids the skin charring too quickly. The cooking time will vary from 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the size of your mackerel and the heat of your fire in the outdoor elements.

Once cooked, you can enjoy the mackerel with your fingers by pulling back the skin and dipping the flesh into the chimichurri and mayonnaise, or slit them open, remove the fillets and serve with the sauces in the wraps.

Salt Cod with Aioli

Salting cod was once a tradition, along with drying it, to preserve it for use in the winter months. Herring got a similar treatment. But it doesn’t have to just be cod – you can, in fact, salt and dry most white fish and use it in similar ways. Many cultures around the world do this and the intensified flavour of the fish is integral to the dish. So here is a way to salt your own cod, or other fish, at home. I’m using Blackthorn Sea Salt but you can use any of the other wonderful sea salts produced around the coast. The whole preparation of this dish takes two days.

Serves 6–8

1.5kg fresh cod fillet, or other fish, with skin on

Blackthorn Sea Salt

For the aioli

4 plump garlic cloves

Blackthorn Sea Salt

3 large egg yolks

3 tbsp olive oil

juice of ½–1 lemon, to taste

freshly ground black pepper

Run your fingers along the fish to check for bones – if there are any, pull them out with tweezers. Find a dish or container to fit your fish and pour in a layer of salt to cover the base. Place the fish, skin-side down, on this bed of salt and then completely cover with another layer of salt. Cover with cling film or foil and pop in the fridge for 24 hours.

Take the fish out of the fridge and lift it out of the brine that has formed from the salt. Rinse the fish in cold water then place it back into the cleaned dish or container and cover completely with cold water for 24 hours, changing the water three or four times.

After the salted fish has soaked in the water, drain and pat dry. It is now ready to poach, steam, roast, fry or add to a stew. If poaching, add white wine to the stock, and serve the cooked fish with homemade aioli.

To make the aioli, crush the garlic with a little salt and stir in the egg yolks. You can do this using a mortar and pestle, or a small bowl with a wooden spoon. Gradually add the olive oil in a thin stream, beating all the time, until your mayonnaise is nice and thick. Add the lemon juice gradually, adjusting to your taste, and season with the black pepper.

Otter Ferry Seafish (Loch Fyne)

When you have spent over three decades creating a premium product that is sustainable, traceable and delicious, but, for a number of reasons including cost and climate change, you have to let it go, the blow must be hard to bear.

Back in 1991, Alastair Barge, the owner and managing director of Otter Ferry Seafish, began a halibut hatchery on Loch Fyne as a way to reduce the pressure on the endangered wild stocks. He and his team took on the task of catching the broodstock in the North Atlantic waters around Iceland, the Faroes and northern Scotland and transporting them back to Loch Fyne where the cold temperature and algae of their natural habitat had to be simulated in the landbased tanks pumped with seawater. It was by no means an easy task but it was successful and the juveniles were transported to more landbased tanks on the Isle of Gigha where they continued to grow under the care of the local island team. From the annual harvest of 100 tons of fresh, healthy halibut, some were smoked over whisky barrel chips to produce the award-winning Gigha Smoked Halibut. But, recently, one of the problems that Otter Ferry Seafish has had to face is the rising temperature of the sea around the island affecting the viability of the farm and so the production of halibut on Gigha will have to end. This is the blow that is hard to bear.

With the blow comes resourcefulness, however. Alastair will look at alternative species that may be more suited to the changing conditions around Gigha, and the halibut marine hatchery on Loch Fyne will continue to produce juvenile halibut to be transported to colder waters. Meanwhile, the ongoing production of wrasse to deploy to the salmon farms as cleaner fish keeps the team at Otter Ferry Seafish very busy. Once hatched, the wrasse are no bigger than an eyelash and require a complex diet to develop. They take 18 months to grow big enough to be deployed and, during this time, they have to acclimatise to the conditions of the salmon pens in order to reduce the stress of the transfer and maximise their performance as cleaner fish. By farming wrasse, Otter Ferry Seafish will hopefully release the pressure on the wild wrasse being caught as cleaner fish for the salmon tanks.

Halibut Kebabs with Orange Zest Chermoula

Fiery and zesty, chermoula is a classic Moroccan marinade for flavouring fish and chicken cooked in tagines and over the charcoal grill. The sweet, juicy flesh of fresh halibut is delicious marinated in this zingy, orange zest version and cooked over a fire bowl or charcoal grill. You can, of course, can use any firm and chunky-fleshed fish of your choice, such as monkfish, ling, coley or salmon but, with great faith in Otter Ferry Seafish (p.9) finding a new home for the rearing of their juvenile halibut, I am thinking ahead.

Serves 6–8

For the chermoula

4 plump garlic cloves

1–2 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp Blackthorn Sea Salt

grated zest of 2 oranges

juice of 1 orange

juice of 2 lemons

1 tbsp olive oil

2 fresh red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped

a small bunch of fresh coriander, finely chopped

a small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

1 whole side of halibut, roughly 900g, trimmed and cut into bite-sized chunks

2 bell peppers, perhaps 1 red, 1 yellow for colour, deseeded and cut into modest bite-sized pieces

metal skewers

lemon or orange wedges, for serving

Using a mortar and pestle, pound the garlic and cumin seeds with the salt to a smooth paste. Pound in the orange zest to work the natural oil, then stir in the orange and lemon juice. Add the olive oil, chopped chillies and herbs, and mix well.

Place the halibut chunks into a shallow bowl and spoon the chermoula over them. Gently toss the chunks in the chermoula, making sure they are coated. Cover and chill for roughly 6 hours so that the flavours penetrate the fish.

Prepare your outdoor grill, or fire bowl. Gently toss the halibut chunks one more time to make sure they are coated in the chermoula and thread them onto the skewers, alternating with a piece of pepper in between every two or three chunks of halibut.

Place the skewers over the grill, or fire bowl, and cook for 2–3 minutes each side, until firm and just cooked.

Enjoy with lemon or orange wedges to squeeze over them.

Halibut Fillets with Jura Journey Beurre Blanc (Jura)

The ferry ride from the mainland over to Islay and Jura only takes a couple of hours but it feels like a world away from the mainland. If you arrive in Port Askaig on Islay, a tiny car ferry takes you the short distance across the Sound of Islay to the Isle of Jura. Here, the single road snakes along the shoreline and open moorland, passing wild deer and glimpses of the stunning Paps, to the island’s pub, whisky distillery, gin distillery and the new distillery for Deer Island Rum. ‘Deer Island’ is understood to be the meaning of the Norse word jura which is apt as there are estimated to be 5,000 red deer and only 250 inhabitants on the island. With its unspoilt feel, Jura is one of my favourite west-coast islands, and home to one of my preferred whiskies, drawing its pure water from the tops of the Paps. You could use any of the Jura single malts for this recipe but the Jura Journey, matured in bourbon casks, with its creamy, nutty, soft spice and pear notes is a good place to start.

Serves 2

1 shallot, finely chopped

170g butter

60ml whisky

50ml double cream

a squeeze of lemon juice

a glug of olive oil

2 thick halibut or hake fillets with skin on and patted dry with kitchen paper

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Jura Journey, to accompany