Fish is the dish of the day!!
Eating fish has always been a big love of mine…. Even from a young age I can remember walking past the fish shop with my mother, intrigued as I looked through the open door to see all the different fish with their shiny silver skins, saying to my mum ‘I want to work in here one day!’. She and others couldn’t imagine why you would want to work in such a smelly environment but for me, I loved looking through the glass windows of the display cabinet as Mr Gilbert the fishmonger picked up the requested fish and wrapped it up in a sheet of paper.
It seems that I might have been quite a gross child, and was totally fascinated by the idea of poking the eyes out of the fish that my father had just caught… I used to get so excited when he came home from a fishing trip with a fresh catch and enjoyed watching him clean and gut it ready for under the grill. Coming from Scotland, we were pretty spoiled for choice with an abundance of fish in the rivers and seas. Salmon, cod, trout, hake and haddock were the most popular fish that you would see in the windows of the fishmonger but more often than not, my father would bring home a wild salmon or trout which he’d caught by the rivers.
To this day, fish is still my favourite meal and I have been lucky through my travels to have sampled some of the most delicious things to come out the sea. From massive king crab as big as my head and hand dove scallops off the coast of Sakhalin Island, Russia, Mahi Mahi in Hawaii, smoked eel and other sorts of fish from Japan’s famous Tsukiji fish Market. Of course, there are still plenty of fish out there in oceans that I have yet to try and even though this was a wonderful experience, mackerel, sardines and salmon are always present within my weekly diet. Full of the largest amounts of Omega 3 essential fatty acids, and least amount of heavy metals due to being so far down the food chain, these lovely oils drench all our cells and help body protect itself against nasty pathogens that want harm us