Sea Fish

Appears in
Shaun Hill's Cookery Book
Shaun Hill's Cookery Book

By Shaun Hill

Published 1990

  • About
Sea fish are the last properly free-range food, and they are better fresh than frozen. This may seem pompously self-evident but it isn’t. Quite a few things freeze well, fresh herb purées and stock, for instance. It is important to remember the opposite of fresh is stale and not frozen, but in this case it shouldn’t be necessary. Most of our fish comes from the North Atlantic, and we should not accept frozen just to make life easier for those who sell it.

We are very lucky to be surrounded by those really great fishing grounds of the North Atlantic. The parts of the globe which are coloured blue may all be sea or water but are not all full of fish that are good to eat. Fishermen tend to hunt for a specific quarry and it takes great skill to track their likely whereabouts. The different species of fish and shellfish live in different parts, determined by factors like water temperature, salinity, water depth and the availability of food. The warm currents of the Gulf Stream make great diversity possible. It is a fascinating subject, and I suggest you read Alan Davidson’s North Atlantic Seafood if you want to find out, for instance, why there should be more sea bass in the summer or why some species migrate huge distances to spawn or feed.