Sunday, April 13, 2008

Fishy tale

The MM arrived home from a rugby match yesterday with a bag containing this trout, caught by his rugby chum's ten-year-old son, Will. I measured it for the record book, as Will has a very vivid imagination and I just know what the conversation is going to be on his next visit!
I was gutting and cleaning the trout, in preparation for today's lunch, when The Food Programme came on the radio, the day's topic being fish. Busy cutting off fins, head and tail and removing all the bones, I was just a little annoyed to hear that we have lost the art of handling, preparing and cooking fresh fish. Opportunity is all that we lack. Ten years ago we had two fishmongers in the village and now we have none - and we are only 3 miles inland! A combination of fishing restrictions and supermarket monopolies has put many local fisheries out of business.

I meant to take a picture of the cooked trout but the MM and his mother wouldn't wait! This is all that remains of our fishy feast, served with a very nice South African Chardonnay. It was good.

Just in case you want to know how to follow that - local rhubarb made into a crumble and served with Devonshire cream. Of course.

4 comments:

  1. So m., how long is that in inches? Fish -- love eating it, ate cleaning it or cooking it for that matter. Local fish stores here have dwindled down to less than a handful for the whole county.

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  2. It's about 18 inches, e, but young Will has never heard of those! I still think in feet and inches, though and keep both sets of rules handy.

    I'm sorry to hear your fish stores are disappearing as well as ours. I'd much rather eat fish than meat and don't mind the preparation.

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  3. er -- that's hate, not ate. I wasn't trying to go all Cockney on you.

    o/t, but I just thought of it.

    We've started watching "The House of Eliot" on CD (thank you for recommending it) and liking it a lot. Last night's episode about the travail the sisters are having trying deal with the restrictions in their lives, it finally got through to my husband that women had it pretty tough in those days.

    He got so annoyed, he said out loud, oh give the girls a break! I couldn't help laughing and so did he.

    Much as we get annoyed about things, we, both men and women, really have come a long way.

    Pity about young Will's ignorance of feet and inches. It's his heritage gone with the wind as well as ours.

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  4. Glad you're enjoying the House of Eliot series, e, and equally glad that it may be a way of opening men's eyes to what women had to put up with! Like many successful tv series, it went on too long in my opinion and the storyline gets thinner. The early years are good, though.

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