Cooking Local Seafood After a Coastal Walk

Buy Where the Boats Come In

There is a particular pleasure in finishing a long stretch of coast path, salty and windswept, and buying your supper from a harbour shed that still smells of rope and diesel. The fish is usually landed that morning, the person serving you often caught it, and you will pay less than you would inland for something considerably fresher.

Ask what came in today and let the answer guide you. A good harbour shop will tell you which boats went out, what they landed and how they caught it. Look for line-caught, hand-dived or pot-caught fish and shellfish where you can; these methods are selective and tend to leave the seabed alone. If you are unsure, buy what is plentiful and cheap. Abundance is usually a decent signal of sustainability, and it is almost always what the locals are eating.

Freshness cues worth remembering:

• Bright, slightly bulging eyes with a clear lens.
• Firm flesh that springs back when you press it.
• A clean, sea-and-weed smell, never ammonia.
• Glossy skin with intact scales, and red, not brown, gills.
• Shellfish with tightly closed shells, or ones that snap shut when tapped.

Estuary towns are the best of both worlds. There you will find bass, flounder, cockles and mullet alongside the usual suspects, and riverside walkers heading home past a chalk stream can often pick up a locally caught brown trout. Eat with the seasons: mackerel and crab in summer, mussels and oysters in the colder months, scallops at their sweetest in winter.

Keeping Your Catch Cool on the Journey Home

The gap between harbour and hob is where good fish turns. Plan for it before you set off, not after.

• Pack a cool bag and two frozen ice packs in your rucksack if you know you will pass a harbour near the end of the walk. Frozen water bottles do the same job and double as a drink on the way.
• Ask the shop to gut and fillet for you. A gutted, cleaned fish keeps far longer than a whole one, and by the time you get home the fiddly work is done.
• Ask for a handful of ice. Most harbour shops will oblige if you bring a bag for it.
• Keep the bag out of direct sun. In the car, the footwell or a shaded boot is better than the parcel shelf.
• On a warm day, two hours is a sensible limit. In cold weather you have more leeway, but not unlimited.

If your journey home is long, buy on the way back rather than in the morning. Fish that has spent six hours in a warm car is not a bargain at any price.

Simple Cooking for Tired Legs

After eight miles, nobody wants a recipe with three stages and a list of eighteen ingredients. Choose methods that are one pan, under fifteen minutes, and forgiving of a distracted cook.

A useful rule of thumb: fillets and flat fish want a hot pan and butter; whole mackerel or bass go under the grill; mussels and clams steam in a lidded pot with a splash of cider; crab needs nothing more than bread and lemon. Salt fish a few minutes before cooking, pat it thoroughly dry, lay it skin-side down in a hot pan and resist moving it. Crowding the pan steams rather than fries, so cook in batches if you must.

Four Fast Suppers Worth the Walk

• Grilled mackerel with lemon and toast. Slash the sides of each fish two or three times, season inside and out, and grill for four to five minutes a side. Serve on buttered sourdough with a hard squeeze of lemon and plenty of parsley.
• Mussels in cider. A kilo feeds two generously. Sweat a chopped onion and two cloves of garlic in butter, add 250ml dry cider, tip in the mussels, clamp on a lid and steam for three minutes. Discard any that stay shut. Bread is not optional.
• Pan-fried scallops with bacon. Six hand-dived scallops between two. Crisp some streaky bacon, lift it out, then sear the scallops for sixty to ninety seconds a side in the same pan. Buttery, sweet, and done in ten minutes.
• Crab on toast. Brown and white meat, a little mayonnaise, lemon, black pepper, thick toast. If you are truly spent, this is the one to fall back on.

What to Keep in the Kitchen

Whether you are home or in a holiday let, a short list of staples makes all the difference when you walk in with a bag of fish and no energy left.

• Good butter and a decent olive oil.
• More lemons than you think you need.
• Garlic, an onion and a bunch of parsley.
• Sea salt flakes and black peppercorns.
• A small bottle of dry cider or white wine for steaming.
• A heavy frying pan and a pot with a tight lid.
• Bread, or the means to make toast.

Most letting kitchens have a usable pan and a lidded pot. If yours does not, a single deep frying pan with a lid will cover nearly everything above.

Serving It: Bread, Butter and a Bit of Green

Keep the sides simple so the fish stays the point. New potatoes boiled with a sprig of mint, a sharp green salad, or greens wilted in butter with a squeeze of lemon all work. Something acidic cuts beautifully through oily fish like mackerel; something buttery suits delicate white fish and shellfish.

Eat what you buy within twenty-four hours if you can, and freeze anything you cannot get through. Label it with the date and the species, and use it within a month or two for the best texture. Then put your boots by the door, pour something cold, and enjoy the particular satisfaction of a supper that began on the water and ended, an hour or two later, on your own table.