Sustainable fishy on your dishy

You can’t have too much of a good thing, so the saying goes. Though I prefer the poet William Blake’s take on the subject: “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough”. And when it comes to food, knowing what is more than enough is pretty good advice.

Personal restraints or excesses are one thing, but when these excesses combine to cause over demand, problems can arise. And I don’t mean a one-day dearth of vegan sausage rolls because of a clever social media campaign, or an ice-cream famine just because we have three sunny

days in a row. Few foods suffer more than fish when over-demand isn’t managed. Forty years ago, few would have seen issues of fish sustainability coming over the horizon. We ate all the cod, plaice, haddock, salmon, we wanted – and even discarded as waste in the harbour many fish, such as monkfish, that today fetch a premium. It took quite a while for the blindingly obvious to get hauled in with the nets, that you can’t over-fish and expect the fish to keep on coming in. Cod was the first to reach critically low levels, but over time other species such as haddock and herring became close to endangered.

Fish farming has helped fill the supply hole for salmon, bass and a few other fish. But with growing reports of salmon fish farm conditions and the impact on wild salmon, it seems there are few ethical wins with fish. I no longer eat farmed salmon and I suspect it will be one of the next big food scandals.

So, how do we ‘put the fishy on the dishy’ and still feel ethically good about it?

Helpfully, The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) produce a fish sustainability index on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being the most sustainable – by the time you get to 5, well you might as well be eating Finding Nemo. The current MCS ratings for all UK haddock are 1 and 2, so it is a fish you can eat safe in the knowledge there is ‘more than enough’, for now.

INGREDIENTS

Haddock fillets 1 large lime 1 tsp turmeric

METHOD

Juice the lime and stir in the turmeric. Coat the skinned haddock in the mixture and leave to marinate for at least 30 minutes, but not longer than an hour.

Remove fish, shake off excess marinade, and fry for a minute each side until cooked.

Serve with a mild dahl and spicy potato wedges, or with a spicy rice and salad.