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Much more than "just another book of fish recipes", although its does
contain a score of them, author Carol Trewin's Cornish Fishing and
Seafood is, in fact, a considerable in-depth survey and study of the
county's fishing industry.It is probably fair to say that for most who
eat fish, even those of us who live by the sea, very few spare a
thought for those who make the meals possible - the men who put to sea
and catch the fish in the first place, today's hunter-gatherers who, to
quote Superintendent David Whitehead of the Royal National Mission to
Deep Sea Fishermen, Port Missioner at Newlyn, have "a love-hate
relationship with the sea" but follow "Britain's most dangerous
peacetime occupation".
click here to go to the Duchy Fish Quota Company website and order the book online!
We
may at times query the price of fish, but it is a sobering thought
that, as Colin Warwick MBE, chairman of the Duchy Fish Quota Company,
points out in his foreword: "Despite all the safety training and modern
equipment, on average, 62 fishermen are lost or seriously injured
around the UK each year", and that "Cornwall has its share of such
accidents".
While the cost in human life and limb is high, so
too is the cost in just about everything else associated with the
industry, from that of the price of a boat to the price of the fuel
needed to take it to and from the fishing grounds.
Then, too,
aside from financial headaches there are all the other problems that
plague the industry, from decommissioning to quotas, from foreign
fishermen to the "fishermen's friend", the politician.
Indeed,
the fishing industry is beset with so many difficulties it is something
of a miracle that it survives, let alone thrives and, as the people who
appear in the pages of this book believe, particularly members of the
Duchy Fish Quota Company, an organisation which will receive all
proceeds from its sale, that it has a future.
Food editor of the
Western Morning News and author of the award-winning Gourmet Cornwall,
Carol Trewin has broadcast and written on farming, food and the
countryside in a wide range of programmes and publications, but this
must surely be the most comprehensive and pertinent publication she has
yet produced.
She appears to have done everything possible,
apart from actually joining a crew and going out to deep water for
several days and nights, and she is to be congratulated on her
extraordinary hunting and gathering efforts and for telling it like it
is.
As tasty and fulfilling as its recipes promise to be, it is
generously illustrated with specially-commissioned photographs by
acclaimed photographer Adam Woolfitt and archival photographs and
paintings from various sources.
This is a book within the covers of which the voices of those involved in Cornwall's fishing industry can be heard.
Instructive
as well as informative, for the absolute land-lubber, it even contains
visual aids to the different methods of fishing, trawling to
hand-lining, and an illustrated guide to the kinds of fish caught
around Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
As Gordon Ramsay says:
"Cornish Fishing and Seafood supplies us with the true story of the
Cornish fishing industry, and why we must love and cherish it."
This
book should be cherished by all who feel that fishing is vital to
Cornwall, and that without it the county would be but an empty shell.
Cornish Fishing and Seafood is published by Newmill publisher Alison Hodge at £14.95.
Article copyright THE CORNISHMAN
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