The Taste of Britain. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
TECHNIQUE:
Whelks are usually fished within a few miles of the shore; the best quality come from open waters. They are carnivorous and plastic barrels or iron baskets baited variously with dead shore crabs, fish offal or salt herring are used to catch them. On the East coast, a number of pots are tied to one rope to form a shank, with a buoy at each end. Weather permitting, the pots are examined, emptied and re-baited daily. Once landed, the fish are boiled in sea-water, shell-on, for 12-16 minutes, then cooled and the meat extracted. The cap (operculum) is discarded. Alternatively, some processors crack the shell and remove it, which reduces boiling time to 7-8 minutes. If the whelks are required raw, the shells are crushed and removed before packing.
REGION OF PRODUCTION:
EAST ENGLAND.
Whitebait
DESCRIPTION:
INDIVIDUAL FISH ARE VERY SMALL, 3-4CM IN LENGTH AND SLENDER IN PROPORTION. WEIGHT: TYPICALLY, THERE ARE ABOUT 400 FISH TO A KILO. COLOUR: SEMI-TRANSPARENT, OR SILVER-WHITE.
FLAVOUR: WHITEBAIT ARE VALUED AS MUCH FOR THEIR CRUNCHY TEXTURE AS THEIR FLAVOUR, WHICH, WHILST MILDLY FISHY, IS MASKED BY THE FLAVOUR OF HOT FAT DURING FRYING AND THE LEMON JUICE WITH WHICH MOST PEOPLE SEASON THE DISH JUST BEFORE EATING IT.
HISTORY:
Whitebait may be a mixture of the fry of herring (Clupea harengus) and sprat (Sprattus sprattus), or the fry of sprat alone. Historians have claimed whitebait first appeared on an English menu as long ago as 1612 (Davidson, 1979). The name derives from the use of these small fish as bait for catching other fish (OED). It seems that they really became important as food in the mid-eighteenth century. For at least a century after this time, they were a noted speciality of Blackwall and Greenwich, downstream from the City of London (Mars, 1998).
There was much controversy over the exact nature of whitebait, some claiming that it was actually a separate species. This debate was still alive in 1861 when Mrs Beeton stated, ‘This highly esteemed little fish appears in innumerable multitudes in the river Thames, near Greenwich and Blackwall, during the month of July, when it forms a tempting dish to vast numbers of Londoners who flock to the various taverns of these places in order to gratify their appetites … The ministers of the Crown have had a custom, for many years, of having a “whitebait dinner” just before the close of the session.’ This ministerial dinner has origins more banal than epicurean delight in fish fry. There used once to be an annual shindig held at Dagenham by the commissioners for embanking the River Thames. To one of these, in the 1790s, Pitt the Younger was invited and brought some of his Cabinet colleagues. The habit stuck but the location was shifted to the more salubrious Greenwich in the early part of the next century. Only then did they start to eat whitebait. The tradition continued until 1894.
Whitebait still shoal in the mouth of the Thames but the fishery has declined. According to one of the few remaining fishermen, demand for the fish has dropped, partly because they are cooked by deep-frying, now considered an unhealthy method, and because imported whitebait are cheaper than fish caught locally, due to the way in which the fishing industries of other countries are subsidized.
The fishing of whitebait is no longer encouraged because of the implications for fish stocks, though the sprat is not under any threat at present. A whitebait festival was held annually at Southend, down the estuary, at the same time as a ceremony of blessing the sea.
TECHNIQUE:
Whitebait were defined by Alan Davidson (1979) as ‘the fry of various clupeoid fish, notably the herring and the sprat, and often mixed together’; most authorities now state that they are the fry of the sprat alone. They are caught from boats working in pairs with a fine net stretched between them. The season was considered to be March-August, but now fishing is discouraged when there are immature fish in the river, a period which lasts approximately from June until October.
REGION OF PRODUCTION:
SOUTH EAST ENGLAND.
Aylesbury Duck
DESCRIPTION:
OVEN-READY WEIGHT, 3.5-4KG. WHITE FEATHERS AND PINK BEAK; THE FLESH IS PALE, SOFT AND TENDER, WITH LITTLE GRAIN AND LESS FATTY THAN MOST DUCK TYPES; THE FAT IS LOCATED IN A THIN HARD LAYER UNDER THE SKIN. FLAVOUR IS GOOD, WITH PRONOUNCED GAMINESS.
HISTORY:
The family of the one remaining commercial producer has been rearing Aylesbury ducks since the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Martha Bradley, writing in 1756, thought any breed of duck acceptable for the table, but by the time of Mrs Beeton (1861), Aylesburys were noted for their excellence and the intensive system of rearing then current: ‘not on plains or commons … but in the abodes of the cottagers. Round the walls of the living-rooms, and of the bedroom even, are fixed rows of wooden boxes, lined with hay; and it is the business of the wife and children to nurse and comfort the feathered lodgers, to feed the little ducklings, and to take the old ones out for an airing. Sometimes the “stock” ducks are the cottager’s own property, but it more frequently happens that they are intrusted to his care by a wholesale breeder who pays him so much per score for all ducklings properly raised.’ Transport was a factor in the fame of the birds; Smithfield, the London wholesale meat market, was easily accessible.
The old system of rearing died out before the First World War; at the same time, hybrid ducks with Chinese blood became common. The popularity of the Aylesbury declined in the face of competition from birds of more acceptable conformation. Strict enforcement of EU hygiene regulations have further reduced the number of duck-farmers by vastly reducing the economic viability of the business for small producers.
TECHNIQUE:
The ducklings are now hatched in incubators. They are kept indoors for the first 2 weeks of life, and then allowed access to the open air in fenced runs for the third. After this, they are kept in outdoor enclosures for about 5 weeks. For the first 3 weeks they subsist on a high-protein ration; feeding of this continues once they are outdoors, but they also forage for grass and insects. The ducklings are killed at 8 weeks; they are dry-plucked, waxed, and hung 48 hours before evisceration and trussing. Older ducks of a larger size and more mature flavour are available when the breeding stock is killed at about 14 months.
REGION OF PRODUCTION:
SOUTH EAST ENGLAND, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
Romney Sheep
DESCRIPTION:
ABOUT 18-20KG DRESSED WEIGHT FOR A CARCASS AT 3-4 MONTHS; 25KG LATER IN SEASON.
HEAVY-BODIED SHEEP WITH GOOD CONFORMATION. MEAT IS DARK, WELL-FLAVOURED, CLOSE-TEXTURED.
HISTORY:
Romneys are white-faced, naturally long-tailed, and related to the Cheviot, Ile de France, Texel and Welsh Mountain. Their name is that of their native district, Romney Marsh. The stock which may have given rise to the breed were imported in about the second century AD by the Romans. Large numbers of sheep were maintained at Romney by the medieval Priory of Canterbury—whose breeding flock was at Thanet—for the sake of their wool, milk and meat. The relative importance of these products to the strain has waxed and waned. At present it is primarily a wool sheep. In the past, they were shorn of wool in the summer of their birth and sold as store lambs to be finished by arable farmers, graziers and butchers. They were slaughtered for meat as hoggets (over a year old). Often they were kept to 2 years, by which time they became very fat.
The Romney was mentioned by Youatt (1837) as crossed with the Southdown, popular