Fish Forever
“If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.” – Chinese Proverb
All this eating more fish has meant that I have finally had to face up to this whole sustainable fishing thing, something I had previously written off as looking rather complicated and, frankly, unappetising – gurnard, sprats and whelks? Easier just to eat meat! But face it I must and I have been trying of late to make better choices when buying fish and shellfish. I don’t always manage it but, you know, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
And I know I’ve said this before, but it really isn’t always that easy to figure out where a fish has come from and how it was caught, or to remember all the ins and outs while you are standing in the supermarket at 7pm figuring out what to cook or deciding what to eat in a restaurant (hahaha like you’re going to order the FISH). Oh, and to top it all off, the advice changes from time to time as fish stocks are replenished , regulations changed and fishing practices improved.
ANYWAY, the reason I am telling you all this is that while I was thrashing around online trying to figure out if prawns were OK or not, I stumbled upon a couple of useful things. First was this article on the Channel 4 website that accompanied the Hugh F-W Fish Fight series, which looks at each of the UK supermarkets and what they are doing on the sustainable fishing front. It is a bit old now but there are still some very useful suggestions as to what to look out for specifically in your supermarket of choice. It also taught me that Tesco now stock a fish called Pouting and I found this inexplicably hilarious.
The second is the Fish Fight iPhone app (sorry Android users and your massive phones). It has a handy little guide as to which fish to eat and which to avoid, and you can take it to the supermarket with you! It’s not got every fish on there so if you’re really into this stuff you should probably carry round the MSC booklet or Hugh F-W or something in a briefcase, but it covers all the popular ones.
The big bonus, though, is that it has 50 recipes using sustainable fish from Hugh and his mates (including Mark Hix, Jason Atherton, Georgio Locatelli and Allegra McEvedy). (I have just realised that I can’t even TYPE the word Locatelli without swooning ever so slightly). AND IT’S FREE! You can’t even get a good app to collage your Instagram pictures together for nothing these days.
And here is a fish, pouting. You’re welcome.
