No mistake at all, the bass and bream that you see on supermarket counters are farmed in the Easter Med (Greece & Turkey usually). The minimum landing size for UK bass (THERE IS NO SUCH FOOKING THING AS SEA BASS) is 36cm, I wouldn't retain a bass of less than 45cm simply because at 36cm it hasn't reached breeding age yet. The Supermarket fish are around 25cm but they are farmed, not wild-caught and that is not only reflected in the price - line caught would be at least £15 per kilo - but also the quality. Bass are predators, they hunt hard and are not beyond eating their own, so they need to be fit. Farmed bass don't need to hunt, some bloke drops pellets (usually made from halibut) into their pens a couple of times a day. The difference is obvious when you eat them, farmed bass have fatty, flabby flesh, wild bass are all muscle.



I love it when I tell people that I batter & deep fry bass and turbot and even better when I make fishcakes from them. The look on their face is priceless.

The Bass (ok, I won't call it Sea Bass anymore, even though the Portuguese did) that I had in Portugal was at least 45 to 50cm and seemed to be cooked very simply, probably in the charcoal ovens that they had at the back of the counter, it was filleted and served at the table, huge chunks of very creamy white meat and a light accompaniment of spring potato and onion, very little else other than a sprinkling of oil, with a starter of fresh clams it was bloody gorgeous.



I didn't go for what Morrisons called "Sea Bass", instead I picked up a couple of their Thai style prawn "fishcakes" which were actually very palatable although christ knows what was inside them.

Red Mullet. Strong flavoured fish. Anyone else a fan?

Or baccala and it's various other spellings and ethnicities?



But then again, eating a brown trout in a country pub in Kent of the same name was a bit special. Caught in the river next to the pub.

Whenever buying fish remember "the eyes have it". Eyes should be bright and not sunken & dull and the gill rakes should be red or at least a deep pink. Obviously difficult with large fish they requires steaking but then use your nose: if it smells of fish, don't eat it, it should smell of the sea.



One trick used by supermarket fishmongers (especially Morrisons), is to leave whole fish on the ice until they start looking past their best. They then either simply take of the fishes' heads or fillet them, put them in a polystryrene tray with a sprig of parsley & slice of lemon and label them as "freshly prepared". Don't touch them!



You can blame Keith Floyd for making bass popular and also for the "sea" in the name. Prior to him, British housewives wouldn't even consider bass as an alternative to cod or haddock because they are scaly and bony. The only commercial market for bass was as pot bait for crab & lobster. In the US "sea bass" is actually the [url=http://archive.greenpeace.org/oceans/piratefishing/toothfish.htmlPatagonian toothfish[/url



[url=http://theitaliandishblog.com/imported-20090913150324/2009/12/5/baked-whole-fish-in-a-salt-crust-and-a-review-of-seafood-all.htmlOne of my favourite bass recipes[/url that also works with most whole fish

Not a big fan of red mullet and I would only eat salt cod that I'd caught and salted myself. I would NEVER eat that cardboard stuff you see in West Indian shops, I remember the salting process when Hull still had an inustry.



I'm also not a huge fan of trout, although wild-caught brownies are preferrable to any farmed crap

Mullet, not bad. Hadn't had it often.



I enjoy salt cod – usually salt my own at home. Keeps for an absolute age. I like to cook it as the Spanish do, in an absolute pool of olive oil, with sliced peppers and masses of garlic. Works well with boudin noir too (or black pudding, obviously, although this isn't as moist as a boudin).



Trout's lovely when it's not the farmed stuff.

In one small part of Mark Kurlansky's absolutely excellent book "[iCod - A biography of the fish that changed the world[/i", he describes an aspect of the trade between Newfoundland and the West Indies.

Molasses from the West Indies would be taken to Newfoundland and a very cheap cure of salt cod was taken back to the West Indies to feed slaves.

To this day, there is a Newfoundland tradition of ferementing molasses and distilling into rum ... and West Indians still eat salt cod (as in saltfish and ackee).



Way back, before Columbus, the Basques were bringing huge amounts of salt cod back home and not telling anyone where they got it.

The amounts meant that they couldn't have been drying it on the boats and must have been landing it somewhere for drying before brining it home.

Cabot (I think) reported seeing fleets of Basque vessels on the Newfoundland Grand Banks when he was exploring the area, so they were certainly there before he was.

So, it seems possible, maybe even likely, that the Basques were regularly sailing across to Newfoundland and landing fish there looooong before Columbus "discovered" that continent.







EDIT - inadvertent use of brining there, I meant bringing.

Although brining might also have been appropriate, as it happens

Not in the UK, but in the US they call it Sea Bass to differentiate it from the, er, Freshwater Bass that they have there.



Now ... an interesting thing was told to me by an American colleague. Where he lives (can't remember where

) a dam was built across a river up and down which Sea Bass roamed.

Many were trapped in pure freshwater as the dam was completed.

They thrived.

Thanks, I'll bear that in mind when next I'm fishing for bass in the sea in Europe









You missed this bit then?



"In the US "sea bass" is actually the [url=http://archive.greenpeace.org/oceans/piratefishing/toothfish.htmlPatagonian toothfish[/url"

What I'm saying is, basically, Sea Bass is an Americanisation brought over here.

A bit like how a muffin is now what used to be a bun.

And what used to be a muffin is now an English muffin.

And what I'm saying is that it isn't an Americanism at all, the phrase "sea bass" was introduced to UK consumers by Keith Floyd. In the UK the word "sea" is superfluous.

Ah well in that case I'll continue to call it Sea Bass out of respect for Keith Floyd, purely for the fact that he called Fern Britton "an old tart" while giving her a hug on Breakfast TV some years ago.