Fish of the Day - week 8 - the mighty cod!

Just one of only a few dozen cod landed on Newlyn fish market this morning.

While the people of the home nations still have an affinity for battered cod - even though many will not realise that much of the cod sold over the counter in fish 'n chips shops is not caught by UK boats - people are increasingly being offered alternatives to the nations favourite accompaniment to chips - many now offer hake - they continue being caught in increasingly significant quantities both in the South West and off Scotland.

The codfather of fish has shaped the world as we know it today - the surprising and fascinating story of which was superbly told in Mark Kurlansky's book, "Cod: A biography of the Fish that Changed the World" which puts cod up there with the wheel and the Romans in terms of global impact!

When anyone asks a chippy down here in Cornwall where they get their cod from it certainly won't have been landed on the market at Newlyn. There are two very good reasons for this seemingly illogical state of affairs. 

Number one reason is that these days there is no 50-70ft trawl and longline fleet as there was back in the 60s-90s when heavy fishing on big white fish "up channel' was a thing in the Spring of every year. Today's netters tend to work well west of these grounds and the trawls used by the beam trawl fleet, when they do get in the Channel, are just not designed to catch such fish which tend to swim en-masse above the height of the any beam trawl. 

Number two is that the grounds within reach of Newlyn never has been a major source of cod throughout the year. It is only in early Spring that cod appear on the ground in any significant numbers and even then the main fishing area is "up channel" - anywhere from off Pendeen all the way up to Lundy - basically, it's the spawning season.  As far as I know, no tagged cod, caught and released in the South West, has ever been caught anywhere else other than in the South West and never far from where they were tagged in the first place.

However, such an iconic fish has always figured in the public eye. None more so when the Times ran a bizarre story in 2012 saying that there were fewer than 100 mature cod left in the North Sea. Fishermen were outraged at the blatant dis and mis-information ('fake news' being nothing new it seems) being so gleefully peddled by the media. I wrote a piece for the Great British Chefs website in order to try and put some perspective on the matter - very much needed as the full impact of Hugh Fearnley-Whittinstall's well intentioned but totally misguided Fish Fight campaign that was about to hit our screens was to bear witness!

Tragically, the same narrative is still being peddled by disingenuous NGOs today - their scaremongering serving largely to justify continued support from lobby group funders and organisations like PEW who largely funded HFW's Fish Fight TV series. Scottish white fish boats often seek to avoid areas where cod are in abundance in order to conserve quota. Crucially, poor catch data recorded and submitted by MAFF on behalf of South West boats saw a ludicrously small quota pf cod assigned to Area VII - something like 10% of the tonnage the French claimed for at the time. To be fair to them, they had a track record from nearly 200 boats that fished Area VII - many of them prawn trawlers that caught cod as a by-catch. The change in the fleet structure of South West boats meant a double whammy was dealt as the newer more efficient fleet of gill netters and remaining trawlers in the late 1990s and early 2000s struggled to avoid what cod there was given individual boats often had around 100kg of cod quota per month - when each boat was capable (and did) very often catch that amount in a single haul.

Brexit MPs before and after the Referendum endlessly peddled the, 'take back control' mantra - and the fleet are still waiting for a resolution of the quota imbalance for cod and other white fish like haddock.

Whatever the arguments, there is no denying cod is a fabulous fish to eat, Fish and chips aside, big, pristine white flakes of flesh when cooked well are sublime. I remember taking two ITN and Sky journalists to Bruce Rennie's, The Shore in Penzance. The guy from Sky savoured every mouthful of his asian-fusion cod fillet as if it were going to be his last.

There are more recipes for cod than I can count but there is one simple rule for cod in the kitchen - DON"T OVERCOOK IT!