Fish Dishes – Filleting and Cooking Sustainable Fish

“Thou shall hev a fishy on a little dishy, though shall hev a fishy when the boat comes in.”

“When the boat comes” in reminds us that fish caught at sea has its’ risks. The hardships that fishermen endure to bring in fresh catch has been brought to light more recently with the loss of Adam Harper when his boat that had recently been a victim of the Scallop wars was found capsized off the coast of Sussex.

Fish caught sustainably should be championed. It is a livelihood to many and it is an amazing alternative to meat. Everything in moderation is our motto here at the Kitchen Garden Cookery School.

Miranda used to dislike eating fish with a passion until her curiosity got the better of her and she took a job at Phil Bowditch Fish Shop in Taunton to train to be a fishmonger. The savings were of course to help her escape the delights of her hometown Taunton, to escape to Latin America. After months and months of cleaning and gutting and filleting fish, her taste buds began to realise that it wasn’t so bad after all. Sword fish is a great place to start. Chunky, white fish, with a parsley sauce over the top, prawns in a garlic butter, shallow fried squid. Her phobia was gone.  Having travelled the world, learning how to cook fish on a campfire on the beach in Peru at the start of the Inca trail to Cuzco, she was hooked line and sinker. You can to this day still see the steps up from the beach and the path that young men used to use to run the fish from the beach to the king in Cuzco over 240 miles away. A move to Barcelona grew Miranda’s passion for squid, cuttlefish, scallops and sushi, and on her return she went and worked with a fish chef who was pulled off the crabbing boats in Cornwall in the 70s by Rick Stein and trained to cook in his first restaurant, The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow.

On this course you will lose any preconceptions that fish is expensive, or hard to cook. You will learn how to fillet two different types of fish. We will make a fish curry, some little Thai fish cakes and a chilli dipping sauce. If you want to make sushi, we can do that. If you are more interested in the traditional methods of cooking fish then you will make a fish stock, a beurre blanc or noisette which goes extremely well with Skate or ray. You will make a great local ale beer batter for Friday Night Fish and Chip Night and learn how to cook fish en Papilotte which we will then use to make either fish cakes or a fish pie. If you already know the basics never fear, we will tailor a course to show you a few more ‘Fishy Dishy’s’ that you can enjoy cooking for your friends and family.

Price: £200
Course limited to 4 people
Group Offers available

NB: If you would like a more gourmet and technical course that includes Searing scallops, shucking Porlock Bay Oysters, cleaning and cooking huge prawns, making a couple of seriously decent sauces and more, the course price will be bespoke. Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635.