Billingsgate Seafood Training Blog

Fab Scottish Diver Scallops….

The boys at Bards Shellfish have had some fantastic diver scallops this week… all from Scotland. Its a great time of the year for this shellfish – the ‘tongues’ (roes) are full and the muscle meat – sweet and succulent.

They sell large, medium and small and prices start at £10 per dozen…..

Pic captions: Large scallops

Medium and small

Scallops with Chorizo

If you make an early morning visit to Billingsgate – the Billingsgate Cafe sells great seared scallop and bacon rolls…. and we highly recommend them!  This is our take on that – and these make a great snack! 

Heat 55g diced chorizo in a frying pan until the fat begins to run, increase the heat and cook over a medium heat until beginning to frazzle, but not burn. Lift onto a plate and set aside. Heat the frying pan until the fat is just beginning to smoke. Add 6 prepared scallops and pan-fry over a high heat for 1 -2 minutes on each side or until the scallop is lightly seared. Replace the chorizo and add 3 finely sliced spring onions, 1 tbsp finely chopped parsley and a splash of white wine, toss over the heat and season to taste then serve with on in toasted ciabatta and a few rocket leaves.

We have just published our training figures for 2012. Despite some quieter periods due to all the events of 2012 we still managed to work with just under 9500 people during the year.

Just under 5000 were school children taking part in our Outreach project. We go out to primary schools across the South East (anywhere from Suffolk down to the South Coast) to get kids handling all types of seafood.

We have funding in place to deliver loads of these school visits in early 2013 – so if you would like to nominate a primary school please contact us at the school on 0207 517 3548 to discuss arrangements. We look forward to hearing from you.

The rest of our training figures are divided between our industry courses and food lovers days, but as a charity we are pleased to say that we have met our charitable objectives  during 2012.

If you want to support our activities, please book onto one of our courses.

CJJ

Jan 2013

The Mediterranean Diet Revisited Conference took place at Fishmongers’ Hall on 2nd November.

A number of impressive speakers from the US, Canada, France and the UK examined the Mediterranean diet, specifically from Crete and highlighted the importance of the right balance of omega 3, 6 and 9 in the diet. The long chain omega 3 fatty acids are predominantly gained from seafood and the conclusion of the conference is that we do need to eat more seafood for well being.

The Cretan diet consisted of plenty of legumes, fruit and vegetables. Cheese and fish also feature in the diet with only a small quantity of red meat eaten weekly. Cheese would have predominantly be made from goat’s cheese. Wine was drunk daily (hooray!) but in moderation (of course). Seafood played a key part, specifically the cephalopod group of squid, cuttlefish and octopus.

Questions have been raised recently about the actual benefits of taking omega 3 oil capsules in place of eating seafood and there are doubts that these capsules can offer the same benefit as gaining it naturally in a diet high in seafood.

As part of the conference I was joined by Karen Galloway, head of marketing for Seafish. We both have years of experience trying to encourage the consumer to enjoy more seafood. But we both still find the same old reasons are given as excuses for NOT eating it. We challenged the attentative audience at the conference by asking who had enjoyed seafood within the last week (a few hands went up) and who had eaten squid or cuttlefish in the last week (very few hands went up). We then explained that it is a real challenge to get many consumers to eat more fish.

We have a top 10 list of reasons why we don’t eat fish, this includes not knowing what to choose, how to tell its fresh, how to cook it, how to tell WHEN it is cooked, how to avoid the smell after cooking, what to choose on a modest budget… there are plenty of good and valid reasons and of course – many consumers simply don’t want to manage a fish with eyes, skin, head and bones still attached…

At the Seafood School we have developed a course for those who KNOW they should eat more fish but need inspiration. As a pilot course of Essential Seafood Mornings in January we would like to offer 12 free places to anyone who wants to try more fish but can’t bear the thought of it… our challenge is to try and find ways for everyone to enjoy more seafood.

The course will take place on a Monday morning between 10.230 and 1.30pm. We will show you how to cook 4 easy recipes and you make something to take away for a family supper,

If you would like a place on this course, please contact us through our administration desk admin@seafoodtraining.org – all you need to do is give your reasons why you don’t like fish and tell us what you have tried cooking before. We will choose the first 12 applications that really demonstrate the interest in trying to eat more seafood. There will be no bones and eyes in sight and we will show you how to find any loose ones and lots of tips to make handling, cooking and enjoying it very easy.

We look forward to hearing from you.

CJ Jackson

November 2012

Frozen fish – do you eat it?

At Billingsgate – for every 15kg of fresh fish coming through the doors – there is 10kg of frozen. C.T. Holmes and Seahawk are a couple of the biggest frozen fish businesses here and others including Leleu and Morris and John Stockwell who sell frozen as well as other fresh and prepared products – there is plenty to choose from.

Our customers have mixed feelings about buying frozen fish – and they needn’t as if you buy fish that has been frozen commecially – it CAN be fresher than fresh – especially if it is labelled frozen at sea. Product frozen at sea has to legally be frozen within 3 hours of being landed.

If you want to freeze your own fish at home it needs careful wrapping - we suggest a double layer of freezer bags, remove as much air as you can and seal well. Only freeze fish in small batches and place it in the coldest part of the freezer. We also recommend that ‘home frozen’ fish is used within 4 – 5 weeks – not much longer than that. If you buy it commercially frozen it will have a much longer shelf life.

On the subject of frozen fish we recently organized an event here tasting MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) certified ‘frozen at sea’ Norwegian cod and haddock from Carisma. Cyrus Todiwala attended this event and then showcased it on Saturday Kitchen. This product is really superb and is particularly good deep-fried. This same product will be featured at our Celebration of Sustainable Seafood Event on 21st November (places still available) and we will also be including it at our next Seafood Pop-Up Restaurant held here at Billingsgate during the first two weeks in December… (book now to avoid disappointment)

Interested in frozen fish and what to look for…? contact us

CJJ 22/10/12

No one can deny that the Olympics have been a splendid affair,…. BUT after being told to keep off the roads during the Olympics, the message really did sink in…. East London was like a ghost town and most of us found it much quicker than usual to get from A to B, but trade at the market was slow.

On a positive note our ‘Pop Up’ School in Kent sold well and we worked with some fantastic south coast fish: plaice, slip soles, brill, herring and cuttlefish. We also prepared trout too.

‘Pop Up’ is all about fish preparation and then we cook a selection of dishes for our guests to enjoy for lunch. We grilled the mackerel with chilli and ketjap manis, made seafood stock, smoked the trout and made a Smoked Fish Morrocan Couscous for lunch. Our guests took away a tray roast of white fish with cherry tomatoes and basil for supper.

I think the highlight for most was the cuttlefish – I did think at the time that I was mad working with it in my own kitchen – as this time it was me – and NOT Tony (our Kitchen Assistant) that had to clean at the end of the day.

During ‘Pop Up’ the age old concerns about cleaning after fish preparation was a talking point. One of our guests commented on how ‘unfishy’ my kitchen smelt – and that was after 14 trout, 14 plaice, 14 Dover sole, 8 cuttlefish and prawns where prepared (scaled, trimmed, gutted etc) and half a dustbin was filled with the debris.

This made me reflect on one of my main reasons for writing about fish. When I wrote the Leiths Fish Bible with Leiths in the early 1990s – I remember thinking that many consumers know they should eat more fish because it’s healthy – but were concerned about tackling it: unsure about how to prepare and cook it well, but importantly – concerned as to how to make sure the house doesn’t smell after prep and cooking! I lived in a flat at that time – and I really did appreciate the latter.

At Billingsgate Seafood School we are meticulous with our cleaning schedule and talk about the best way to clean down to ensure there are no reminders the following day. We keep this message simple and there are a few easy steps to take.

Hands: we recommend washing hands in hot soapy water to begin with, but then ALWAYS rinse hands in cold water once fish has been handled, this removes any traces of the fish – then hot soapy water again.  If you put your hands directly under a hot tap once you have handled fish it tends to ‘cook the aroma’ into the skin…. It is a simple but very effective rule. Many chefs recommend using salt and lemon – but where is that lemon when you need it?!

Equipment: The same process of cold rinsing and a hot soapy wash apply to all here too. We use plastic chopping mats for fish prep and all our utensils have plastic handles. Rinse all equipment thoroughly in cold water first, then wash thoroughly in very hot soapy water. Once we have finished for the day, we then soak all our equipment in Milton (the baby bottle sterlizing solution) for a short period of time.

With fish waste at home I put this away from everything else, double wrap it in a plastic bag and then freeze it until dustbin day.

Cooking fish ‘en papilotte’ – wrapped in paper or foil produces the least amount of aroma during and after cooking. Poaching fish in a covered dish in the oven is also effective. I remember the trick of adding a bayleaf to boiling cabbage or cauliflower to lessen the aroma of that – never sure whether that did work!

Anyway – ‘Pop Up’ was successful and we will be running a few more of these over the winter. In the meantime we have ‘Pop Up’ Seafood Restaurant at Billingsgate Market coming up… We have just published dates in October, November and then a festive special for December. The places are limited on these dates.

I managed to escape from the market and we had a lovely few days on the Suffolk coast. Apart from the beach, sun and fishing for crabs on Bawdsey Quay, we enjoyed some locally caught seafood:  native lobsters, brown crabs, rock oysters from Butley Oysterage and some fabulous smoked seafood from Pinneys of Orford.

Bill Pinney’s father started the business in Orford in 1959 and he has continued producing some lovely artisinal products ever since. Bill gave me a tour of his smoke house with sides of salmon hanging and trays of North Atlantic prawns being smoked ready for sale in their shop on Orford Quay, but also their restaurant. Pinneys smoked cods roe is some of the best I have ever tasted and I think that I must now conceed the crown for taramasalata to Irene - who makes ‘the’ best on the premises to sell in the shop – it is fabulous.

Smoked cold water prawns are another treat and I managed to get a tub of those - back to Kent cold enough and in one piece – to enjoy at home.

I highly recommend all of Bill’s products – beautifully packaged – they also do mail order too – so worth checking this out on line. Take a look at butleyorfordoysterage.co.uk for further details

Next blog will be on freezing fish – why frozen fish is often the ‘best’ standby and what to look out for if you buy frozen fish. We are also often asked about how to freeze fish at home – so more on that soon.

CJ Jackson

The Olympics have been the talk of the market for months now – but it was only back in November that it dawned on all of us here just how challenging it is going to be moving in and out of the market. 

But…..We have lots of things in the pipeline for visitors to make the most of - and many of the classes on offer are filling well. Phil Jolly, our Financial Administrator, and the one that puts up with all of my ‘can I have’s' with a cheerful smile - is going to be our Olympic travel guru… (my way of getting back at him for managing to obtain tickets for the showjumping event at Greenwich) He has downloaded all the info about travelling during the Olympics - so for anyone not sure what’s happening, call Phil during office hours- Monday – Friday 8.30 – 4.30pm.

Life on the market is slow and although there has been some wonderfully fresh fish,  the number of species is limited as the weather has restricted fishing. I am also discovering some species that we use regularly are being stock piled for the Olympic guests – so I am having to be on the ball to get everything we want.

Thinking about numbers of species on the market we had a discussion about an actual list and a total – this got me thinking and I have started a species AND product list of all seafood to be found at Billingsgate Market. 100 years ago the focus was on North East Atlantic, coastal fish along with river fish. Today fish arrives from all around the globe – there seems to be something new every week.  It is this number of species that makes a visit here so jaw-dropping.  I have done a quick poll amongst the merchants – and I think I may suggest a sweepstake… but the guess is anything between 150 – 300 species making its way through the market on a yearly basis, bearing in mind that some things are seasonal. I gaily thought this would take a few days: I now realise that it will become a major project – but it’s worth finding out. 

CUTTLEFISH…. I am in the process of working on some new recipes for our classes – and I have cuttlefish in my sites.

Although used extensively in Southern European cooking culture…. Cuttlefish is not as ‘well loved’ as its relatives, squid and octopus in Northern Europe: The Spaniards cook it with raisins and pine-nuts, the French with stuffing of pork and veal and in Venice – simply cooked in its own ink. We love using it in our classes; it is meaty and sweet and I think – easier to cook than squid as it doesn’t toughen quite so quickly. The draw back with cuttlefish is that it can be very messy to clean as it contains a thick, viscous black ink sac – that if burst covers and stains everything in sight. We sometimes gather this ink or use sachets of pasteurised ink for use in the densely black Risotto Nero and commercially it is used for colouring pasta.  The only person not so keen on this is Tony, our Kitchen Assistant, as he is the one that cleans everything down at the end of the day.

Preparation technique for cuttle… Many fishmongers I have spoken to aren’t keen to sell this as it creates such a mess – so at home…. don’t be put off… line up the rubber gloves and put a polypropelene chopping board on the draining board. Grit your teeth, turn a blind eye to any mess and have a go… the process is easy and takes only a few moments.

Grasp the tentacles and pull gently to seperate them from the main body of the cuttlefish. Guts and other internal organs will come away at the same time. Cut the tentacles from the organs BELOW the eyes. Discard the organs. Rinse the tentacles to remove sand and grit and remove any traces of ‘beak’ (found in the centre of the tentacles). There are two longer tentacles that have suction pads – if the cuttlefish is large it is worth trimming these away as they have noticeable suction pads and can be gritty. For the head: slit the membrane in contact with the hard interior shell and extract the shell… you may recognise this as the object found in bird cages (beak sharpener). You may well see the ink sac at this stage – if it hasn’t burst extract this carefully and set aside. Next stage is to peel the membrane away from the rest of the body. There are fins that run around the edge of the head, these can also be removed – and cooked later. Rinse the head and trim the small, but hard nodules that are at the base of the head. You should now have the tentacles, head, fins and ink sac….

What method for cooking…. ? pan-fry or braise…? The cephalopod group (octopus, squid and cuttlefish) are great to cook as they work well with many flavour combinations, but also methods of cooking. Most fish cooks very rapidly, but these can also benefit from very fast cooking or longer slow cooking, making them great for winter casseroles. There are recipes suggesting a few seconds in a frying-pan, 20 minutes in the oven and 2 hours in a casserole pot – so you can take your pick.

The head is the most versatile as this can be cooked using either a long or fast method of cooking. For barbecuing it can be scored, marinated and cooked as a whole sheet (depending on the size – this can take as little time as 1 minute). Cut into strips – it can also be stir-fried – but again quick and furious is best.

Winter recipe for Cuttlefish…

The tentacles and fins tend to be tougher and work well either braised or casseroled… when we prepare it in class – we gather all the tentacles up, brown them in oil with red onions and garlic, add a splash of balsamic vinegar, pinch of sugar, ink extracted from the sac and then add a couple of glasses of red wine, enough stock to just cover and a few sprigs of thyme. Cook it slowly at gas mark 2 for 1.5 hours or until tender. To serve: lift the tentacles onto a serving platter and reduce the cooking liquid down to a sticky jus and return the cuttlefish to warm through and serve with lots of mashed sweet potato.

Summer recipe for Cuttlefish head….

Warm Seared Cuttlefish Salad with Samphire and Green Olives (serves 2)

Heat 4 tbsp extra virgin olive in a frying pan, add a tbsp of shredded basil leaves and 2 cloves of finely sliced garlic and frazzle in the oil for 30 seconds. Tip into a bowl and whisk in the juice of 1/2 lemon, 1 tsp runny honey and 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard, set aside. Heat a further 1 tbsp olive oil in the frying pan until smoking hot, take 4 small, finely scored cuttlefish heads and sear them on over a high heat for 30 – 40 seconds on both sides and no longer translucent. If the pan is hot enough the cuttlefish will take on a lovely golden brown colour. Toss 110g blanched samphire and 50g stoned large green olives with most of the dressing and pile onto a plate. Arrange the seared cuttlefish on top and drizzle with the remaining dressing to serve. Serve hot or warm. 

It is worth noting that Hastings fishery will be catching cuttlefish again soon.  Adam will be in Hastings for a couple of days at the beginning of August and is working with the Hastings Fisherman’s Protection Society promoting locally landed catch – so this is bound to be on the menu. For Billingsgate @ The Classroom on the Coast – Hastings see under Food Lovers drop down menu on our website for more information.

Elver update…..we have been nurturing elvers in our lecture room…they are very settled and are growing – I think up to 1cm since they first arrived with only a handful of casualties…

Thinking about the mess in the kitchen has made me consider about how to have a fresh, fish and scale free kitchen at the end of a fish meal….. When I first worked on the Leiths Fish Bible in the 1990′s many said that it was the smell of cooked fish and the mess in the kitchen that put them off preparing fish from scratch …. we have lots of little tips to share – including Tony’s method of cleaning a kitchen after a dressed crab session…. that’s another story…