No Bones About It

I am an angler, at least a sea angler, and while not claiming huge technical expertise, not a bad one either. Currently I'm 50,000 words into a book on the topic, a future orphan as I've not even started looking for a publisher. I go sea fishing (almost always from boats) for innumerable reasons - buy the book if it ever gets finished, as it is more about such things than the dull minutiae of rigs and tactics - but the biggest is that we eat some of what we catch, and it's delicious.

One of the many skills I could do with honing is the art of filleting. Clumsily done it leaves too much flesh on the bones, good for stock but a bit of a waste; or leaves bones in the flesh, missing the whole point of the exercise. Supermarket fishmongers are not great at it either. Add to that the scandal about re-dating fish on those counters a year or two back and I am wary about buying their offerings. Thus I have a fondness for frozen fish: don't turn your noses up, if from a reputable source with the right green credentials it's a winner, retaining flavour and very rarely containing any bones at all. Remember Robert in the Onedin Line? Probably not. He choked on a fish bone, put off a generation of British telly watchers.

I regularly make fish chowder, like most of my cooking not so much a recipe as a few basic ideas to follow; and fish curry is another favourite. The latter is this evening's main course, the principal ingredient being the dubiously-named 'white fish fillets', actually quite nice pollock when you look further. Half a pack will provide the protein, with some onions, garlic, and for colour a bit of bell pepper. The veg are fried gently until very soft, then a freshly ground spice mix with cassia, dried chilli, pepper, cardamom, fenugreek, coriander and cumin seeds added and cooked for a minute before the still frozen fish fillets and a tin of coconut milk are put in the pan. When the fish is cooked through it's ready.

And yes it does need rice, or naan, or my homemade flatbreads, to bulk it out and soak up the juices.

Half a pack of the fish costs £1.50, the veg maybe 60p, spices bought in big packs from the ethic shelves at Sainsbury's a few more pennies, and the coconut milk from our local Chinese store 89p. So with the rice it is going to be way under £3.50 to feed three of us. I buy rice in 5kg bags, again ethnic shelf jobbies, on a price per kg basis so much cheaper than 1kg versions.

Bargains like that make me feel better about splashing out on stuff like the obligatory roast for a winter Sunday, but even in a relatively affluent household the prices of lamb and beef are getting to be eye-watering. It's almost enough to turn us vegetarian. But not quite.