One of the finest meals I have had in the Cottage was a plateful of scallops and bacon.

We were there over Easter and it was the last week of the season. I bought the scallops from Tommy. I must have seen him coming in and i would have walked up the pier to see what he had. I took six of them still in their tightly closed shell just out of the water. i can’t remember what I paid for them but it won’t have been much.

I had bought a couple a few days previously from Michael the fisherman on him pulling up in his car one evening by the gate and opening his boot to show me what he had. Those had been muddy and disappointing.

Tommy’s smelt clean and of the sea. I had them that evening. After some consulting of books I worked out how to prise open the shell and clear away frill and mantle leaving myself with the white nugget of the abductor muscle and its orange roe. I was careful as I did to keep the two parts of the shell attached. I have four of them still downstairs in the basement.

If you have to hand a copy of Alan Davidson’s North atlantic Seafood take a look at the entry on scallops and admire the drawing showing how they look when opened up.

To cook them I chopped up some Maple Cured Gubbeen Bacon and fried it slowly in a drop of olive oil until it started to give off some its fat. I then turned up the heat and threw in the scallops turning them over after a couple of minutes. Just before serving them I poured in a drop of white wine to take up the caramelised bacon on the bottom of the pan. No-one else wanted to taste them so I ate them all by myself and the were delicious and sweet.

I was reminded of the meal on the back on an article in The Observer Magazine yesterday. It was about scallop fishermen off the  West coast of Scotland the escalating dispute between those who dive and handpick their scallops and the boats that dredge them up from the bottom. The latter method is described as being a bit like cutting down a rainforest to catch a parrot. Although the article clearly sides with the hand divers it doesn’t shy away from all of the arguments around the issue.

I can remember seeing the great heavy iron drag gear on the back of Tommy’s boat that Easter and I can’t help but think on the fact that apart from mackerel and pollock there are very few other fish to be caught in the great expanse of the bay. Something to talk about in the summer perhaps.

Well its been in the oven now for an hour and is smelling dark and liverish.

I had thought I was bound to be able to unearth one or two recipes for the cooking of it from the books on the shelves but was soon disabused. The closest I could find was a few lines in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s book of meat cookery. He had a good few paragraphs on the cooking of heart but suggested that the beginner should start with pigs or sheep. I was a beginner but had committed myself to a large lump of Ox heart.

I tried on the internet and came across a few recipes but they all seemed to be over complicated and the comments at the end could only suggest that it wasn’t to be used for anything else but dog food.

There was some mention of it going well with onion and sage so I told myself that this was no doubt the stuffing the smart lady in Farmer’s market had in mind so I would limit myself to that.

Taking it out of its plastic wrapping and laying it out I tried to get the kids engaged in an instant biology lesson but they weren’t really interested. All they could muster was a turned up nose at the idea of this being their tea.

So I chopped up some onions and sage and pushed that into the available cavities and trussed it up with skewers and string. I then smeared it with olive oil and seasoned it well with salt and pepper. There is some chicken stock on the go so I will baste with some of that in a while.

It seemed appropriate that having put it into the low oven I had to go outside to clear a blocked drain.

We had a cracking meal at Lunya last night. It was early doors before a walk up Wood Street in the rain to watch Zero Dark Thirty at Fact.

The highlight of the meal for me was the stuffed squid. One clean white squid body stuffed with a mixture of porcini and prawns, cooked, and then cut into four neat slices with the tentacles at the end. The slices were served on a small bed of rocket leaves and some sauce. When ordering it I had been concerned as to whether one stuffed squid would be enough for me. But it was just right and I would have been really stuffed if I had had anymore.

I also had a plate of Pedron Peppers, none of which were hot, a plate of BBQ’ed Iberico ribs slathered in a hot romesco sauce and a couple of skewers of duck, pig and preserved fig.

I drank a pint of Estralla and we shared a bottle Barbadillo Blanco because it came from Cadiz and was made from the same grapes as sherry. As did our waitress who was here to learn English. You could taste the sherry in the wine and I want to go back there, to Cadiz, and sit outside and eat a plate of pescaditos fritos watching the world before getting up to walk down some more of its streets, through the buildings that are still slowly collapsing back into the sea.

Thank you to Elaine & Dan for asking us to join them and saving us from a houseful of teenagers.

As we allowed our pints to settle he asked me a question; ‘Do you ever see out there the colour of water when you are catching the fish?’

I looked out through the door and the garden of The Tin Pub which ran down to a small beach and then Kitchen Cove the water was silver and bright in the sunlight and I shook my head and replied; ‘Its blue isn’t it. Or whatever colour the sky happens to be that day.’

‘There’s more colours than blue. You watch carefully next time you are out catching fish and look at the difference. You spend enough time out there you will see which colour works best.’

‘The water on a day like today will look blue but thats the colour of the sky. If the sky started to cloud up it will change more to green. Either is transparent so you can see through it clear. But green and blue aren’t the best to catch fish.’

‘And there will be days when the water is grey and it has a smell to it. Feck knows where the stink comes from. if you’re sat in the pub there will be someone that will tell you the stink comes from whichever man has been out on the water that day.’

‘But the best water if you are wanting to catch mackerel is yellow water. You will get it sometimes when there are squid in the bay. The mackerel feast on them. Watch as you gut them and sometimes you will see one there in its belly. I hear the Romans knew about it and they said the water was like sulphur if the mackerel were in. You can catch mackerel most times but the best catches are when the water is yellow.’

We took our first taste at the pints. Two greedy gulps wiping our mouths with the back of our hands.

‘Its their shit that turns the water. They are greedy fecks and if the squid are in they will stuff themselves until they can’t eat anymore and they shit and they eat some more and shit again. Now you’ve seen the colour of mackerel shit when they are sliding in the bottom of the boat and you’re trying to grab hold of it to give it a nip on the back of the head so you can carry on and catch some more.’

‘Its the squid as well. There’s something in a squid that turns a mackerel shit yellow. Feck knows how it works but they get together and they will stain the water yellow.’

He took another drink from his glass.

‘But the most beautiful colour is if you go fishing at night. Go out there when its dark and the light of the moon is still well down behind Mount Gabrial. Take your boat out to where you know the mackerel roam in their waters. Turn off the engine and sit yourself still for a while. Then stand up tall and look down deep into the water. If you are lucky you’ll see them down there. You won’t see the fish of course but the silver trace of them as they stream through the water. Its the phosphorescence they give off down there. On a good night it can seem as if your boat is being carried along on a river of silver light.’

‘You’d expect a fish that tastes as they do to be ugly. But they are a beautiful fish be it light or dark.’

He finished his glass and nodded goodbye before walking out onto the road. He put his head back through the door ‘Tell Patrick I’ll pay him this evening’ and he was gone.