The River Cottage Fish Book: The Definitive Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Fish and Shellfish

1003 Pages·2012·29.39 MB·English

by  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Copyright © 2007 by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher
Photographs copyright © 2007 by Simon Wheeler
Additional photography copyright © 2007 by Paul Quagliana, Marie Derôme, and other contributors (see Picture Credits)
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com
Originally published in slightly different form in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, in 2007
First Ten Speed Press printing, 2012
Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fearnley-Whittingstall, Hugh.
The River Cottage fish book : the definitive guide to sourcing and cooking sustainable fish and shellfish / Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher ; photography by Simon Wheeler ; additional
photography by Paul Quagliana and Marie Derôme Fisher. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Cooking (Fish) 2. Cooking (Shellfish) 3. Cooking (Seafood) 4. Fishes—Great Britain. I. Fisher, Nick, 1953-II. Title.
TX747.F38 2012
641.6’92—dc23
2011038382
eISBN: 978-1-60774-063-6
Project editor: Janet Illsley
Cover design: Chloe Rawlins
Photography: Simon Wheeler
v3.1
For Oscar and his godfather, Charlie, my two other favorite fishing
companions. HF-W
For my favorite fish eaters, Helen, Rory, Rex, Patrick, Kitty, and Spike. NF

Introduction
1. Understanding fish
Fish as food
Sourcing fish
Fish skills
Shellfish skills
2. Fish cookery
Raw, salted, and marinated fish
Smoked fish
Open-fire cooking
Baked and broiled fish
Soups, stews, and poaching
Shallow and deep-frying
Cold fish and salads
Fish thrift and standbys
3. Guide to fish and shellfish
Sea fish
Freshwater fish
Shellfish

Notes to the US edition
Index
Bibliography
Acknowledgments

Introduction
We both love fish. And that is the overriding reason we have written this book.
As anglers, cooks, and (very amateur) naturalists, we’ve got fish under our skin.
It’s very hard—and rather stressful—to imagine life without them.
Over the years we’ve found all kinds of ways to scratch our fish itch: goldfish
in a bowl, visits to aquariums, goggling at Jacques Cousteau on the telly,
learning first to snorkel and then to scuba dive. Such enthusiasms have come and
gone, but two have always been a constant: catching fish and eating them.
Between us, we have caught and cooked many fish. We have, of course, also
caught a fair few that we haven’t cooked, and cooked countless others that we
haven’t caught. But we are happiest when these two pursuits collide and we get
to consume a fish that we have personally pulled from the deep. For both of us,
our passion for fish as quarry and food began at an early age.
Hugh’s first fishing expedition occurred at the age of six, when his dad took him
to a stream in Richmond Park, armed with a bamboo cane, a length of string, a
bent pin, and a slice of bread. They actually caught a fish! Back home with his
Observer’s Book of Fishes, Hugh identified the catch as a mackerel, noting that
this was a fish that was meant to live in the sea.
Being omniscient, his dad naturally had a convincing explanation: “Er, it must
have decided to swim up from the sea—like a salmon …” That was more than
good enough for the young Hugh. There was no reason to be suspicious. After
all, he had lifted the fish from the stream with his own hands, and watched his
father knock it several times on the head with his own eyes.
Hugh’s mum fried the mackerel in butter and served it with a slice of lemon. It
was the first fish Hugh had ever eaten that wasn’t finger shaped, coated in bread
crumbs, and doused in ketchup—and he enjoyed it very much indeed.
It was ten years before the sorry truth came out. Seeing his teenage son
swearing blind to some disbelieving friends that he had once caught a mackerel
in a London park with a lump of Mother’s Pride on a bent pin, Hugh’s dad was
moved to a guilty confession. He came clean about the trip to the fishmonger’s;
the sleight of hand that slipped the fish onto the hook as Hugh was sent behind a
bush for a much-needed pee; the ritual dispatch of a fish that had, in fact, already