Skinning mackerel

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This time last year I only two weeks to wait from the beginning of July until we were off to Ahakista. Sitting here now we are not going until the middle of August so I still have a full six weeks to wait.

By way of whetting the appetite I have been sent a few ripped pages from The Financial Times  Weekend Magazine which someone thought would have a a couple of recipes I might think worthwhile. It does!

My eye was caught by a recipe for  Mackerel Tartare. It comes from the Polpo Cookbook, which I have and have enjoyed cooking from, but for whatever I reason I had not noticed this before.

So long as I make sure I bring the right ingredients with me it should be a doddle to make and I am never going to have fresher mackerel to make it with. The list of things to make sure I have will only need include a small jar of capers and a similar sized jar of gherkins.

I will need to catch two good sized mackerel, fillet them and skin them. Filleting them won’t be a problem but I have never skinned a mackerel fillet before. The knives should be sharp enough to be up for the job but I may need to make sure I catch a few extra fish in case I make mess of it at first.

The making of it involves dicing the mackerel, marinading half a skinned and seeded cucumber in sugar and salt for an hour, chopping a handful of gherkins and capers and then mixing all together with salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice. There will need to be lots of tasting for seasoning.

We will eat it with good bread from Bantry Market with a beetroot and horseradish pickle.

Lips are being licked.DSCN0285

Listening to Bobby Womack

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It seems like a lot of time has passed since Saturday morning when I saw the news that Bobby Womack had died.

I remember the Sunday night of Glastonbury last year and he was there on BBC2 in his red leather and even watching through the prism of TV I found myself thinikng that this was the best thing that had been on all weekend

Apart from those parts of the weekend I spent drinking too much red wine we have been listening to his music. Most of it on vinyl. And those dozen or sides of black plastic have now distilled themselves down to one side of a greatest hits collection I picked up from somewhere I can’t now remember.

The side finishes with Harry Hippie which is the song that I wanted to listen to when I first heard the news.

It is a knockabout throwaway song but there is something inside it that could speak to a lot of us….

Everybody claims that they want the best things outta life
But not everyone, not everyone
Wanna got through the toils and strifes

Like this particular fella walks around
All day long singin’ this song
Sha na lah dah dah lah dah dah dah dah

It’s the sha na lah that does it.

 

A plague of frogs

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After two days of grey sky and rain the sun has come out so we have been out in the garden.

The rain had weighed everything down, plants have buckled and collapsed under it and the branches which overhang the bed that runs down the left of the garden are bowed over covering the bed in shadow.

For the first time in a couple of weeks there has been time to get outside, to do some tidying up and plant a few more things for the veg patch.

As I walked over the lawn I saw some strange insect crawling across the grass. Looking closer I saw that it was a baby frog no more than half an inch long. Having spotted the one the grass was suddenly alive with them and we stood still, afraid to put down our feet, for fear of standing on one of them. Hopefully a few of them will make it back to the pond next year so we can have them come visit again.

In the greenhouse the one tomato plant I planted from seed is now all of two inches tall. By way of contrast the seedlings I bought from B & Q a few  weeks ago are four foot tall and already starting to bud with small green fruit.

The garlic I planted last year in September looks almost ready for pulling and in a few weeks time we are going to have more golden beetroot than we will know what to do with.

The weather is good enough for a barbeque but I haven’t planned for that. But their is a large piece of pork marinading in quince paste and pomegranate mollasses and a bowl of chickpeas getting ready to be made into falafel.

Saturday I made tomato soup and pork scratchings. The pork scratchings are very good. It was a fatty piece of pig skin that I cut up and mixed with paprika, salt, pepper, garlic and some olive oil and cooked in a low oven for a couple of hours. I am having to slap hands away from the box in which I am keeping them.

Still listening to Bobby Womack.

A few words on Bobby Womack in Liverpool

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A post from earlier this year that maybe worth re-reading

Ralph Bullivant's avatarSheep's Head Food Company

As some of you may know I will be 50 later this year. Sam Cooke died more than a half century ago, the year before I was born. Shortly before he died he recorded A Change Is Gonna Come. I am not sure if Bobby Womack played on the single but he talked about it last night.

It came about halfway through the concert and he had already done Harry Hippy and Across 100th Street. There was a slight worry that he was going to run through the hits and leave the stage after half an hour with the audience pleased that he had done some of the songs they had come for but still wanting more. But it went on for longer than that and the turning point was when he started to sing about Marvin Gaye and the band moved into one of those bits from What’s Going On

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