Fish, Friday.

Smoked salmon is delish.

I had a lovely salmon pie this evening, made by my friend's mother. She was very obliging that we took over the living room for the night to watch back to the future, play pro evolution on the ps3 and shoot each other with remote control helicopters...

Auditor #9 wrote:

Yammamori is across from Hogans or is it Brogans or Grogans? There is a nice busy noisy atmosphere in there like a busy fast food place. And the broth and udon noodles ... wasabi exactly.

How does a child get into sushi ibis? The best fast food there is...

Yamamori and Wagamama are two of my favourite eateries in the Mother City of the Gaels. I longingly go by Yamamori on the bus into Town and it serves quite good food. While it isn't exactly unsullied Asian cuisine, it still is fine food that they make there and the tea they serve as you settle on what you will eat is a nice touch.

Wagamamas is also a really nice place to eat with some seriously good fare with freshly-squeezed juices which are amazing. They do good stuff at good prices. The only drawback is the slightly canteenish feel of eating there. I feel like I'm in the Buttery or something eating in there, which is not the experience in Yamamori. It is, however, a trifling concern as you tuck into some remarkable ramen with your energising fruit smoothie on the side.

Yamamori was my favourite restaurant in town back in the day. The staff were always sound too I might add. Haven't tried Wagamama in Dublin but they are global so I suppose they are the same everywhere. There is another decent japanese restaurant in town, has one of those conveyor belts, is it called Aya or something? It was okay. A japanese aquaintance of mine rated it highly.

Yeah I love Sushi.

About fish on Friday, I used work in quite a few restaurants around the country before I got a real job. Dublin was the only part of the country I noticed a marked increase in people number fish on Fridays. Oh, and nowhere did I notice less meat being eaten on ash Wedsday.

I had a smoked coley stew with chips yesterday. Very nice. My favourite fish dish is probably simple, grilled mackerel


Grilled mackerel with potato and onion mustard
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/grilledmackerelwithp_73663.shtml

Wagamama's on Cork's North Main Street is alright, but every stock with the noodles I've tried seems overly salted. Apart from that it's good value and you can't beat a bit of noodly slurping with a rumbling hungry stomach on ya!

also, farmed fish (Tilapia specifically) could be the most efficient method of producing 'meat'/fish from grain. see Monbiot below on about

The Pleasures of the Flesh


http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/04/15/the-pleasures-of-the-flesh/

Quote :

....For both environmental and humanitarian reasons, beef is out. Pigs and
chickens feed more efficiently, but unless they are free range you
encounter another ethical issue: the monstrous conditions in which they
are kept. I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia
instead of meat. It’s a freshwater fish which can be raised entirely on
vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency - about 1.6kg
of feed for 1kg of meat - of any farmed animal(17). Until meat can be
grown in flasks, this is about as close as we are likely to come to
sustainable flesh-eating.....

...17. The FAO (ibid) gives 1.6-1.8. On April 12th, I spoke to Francis
Murray of the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, who
suggested 1.5.

For the same reason, char is good fish for farming, and is absolutely delicious.

Pax wrote:

..My favourite fish dish is probably simple, grilled mackerel..

Snap! But it has to be cooked within a couple of hours of catching. If it's frozen or yesterday's it just becomes tasteless.

D.Harry wrote:

Pax wrote:

..My favourite fish dish is probably simple, grilled mackerel..

Snap! But it has to be cooked within a couple of hours of catching. If it's frozen or yesterday's it just becomes tasteless.

Over a fire on the beach was the best I ever had. Fished with a bucket over the side of a dinghy.

cactus flower wrote:

D.Harry wrote:

Pax wrote:

..My favourite fish dish is probably simple, grilled mackerel..

Snap! But it has to be cooked within a couple of hours of catching. If it's frozen or yesterday's it just becomes tasteless.

Over a fire on the beach was the best I ever had. Fished with a bucket over the side of a dinghy.

Stoppit, I'm fillin' up here, lookin' out at the crap weather.

Am presumably soo environmentally wrong in saying I just love Sea Bass (and salmon). I know it's wrong but it's so delicious.

Re Fish on Friday, I plan on taking that up again for various reasons, both political and personal.

I find it very interesting that Dublin showed such levels of old Catholic practice, Shutuplaura - also economic good practice I presume. I love meat but can actually quite happily live fairly vegetarian and hardly notice. Meat is a big no-no in the future, if we're honest.

The old Cod'n chips of yore are certainly passing into history. One notices that in every Fish 'n Chip shop in London at the moment.

Edo wrote:

Kalamari soup for lunch

Not Fish, Octopus...
Sorry to be pedantic.

My fave: Mackrel, lettuce, scallion, tomato and fresh green chilli in a bread fresh roll. Barbecued on a boat on moored on the Bosphorus, Istanbul.

This is an interesting idea, though, how food links in with other issues particularly religious issues / edicts. ( as indicated by thread title "Fish, Friday").

Eg I have a Muslim work colleague who did the Hajj pilgrimage in Dec. Never a practicing Muslim, he is now trying to be a bit more orthodox. He can't be bothered going to Mosque apart from at Eid-time, so he has tried to avoid eating haram ( forbidden) food since Hajj - ie eating halal.

Wot a trial that is proving to be. I don't believe he'll keep it up but I wish him well anyway.

Do we really associate food with any other life / religious edicts anymore?

The missus (ie the Laura who should shut up for a moment) is a veggie so I eat a vegatarian diet almost all of the time. The exceptions being sandwiches which don't taste nice unless they hve a slice of meat in them and when we eat out on special occasions, then I'll go straight for a meat dish.

About fish on friday, I heard that the reason the catholic church recommended it was becasue a pope in the middle ages wanted to stimulate the fishing industry in his home area. I'm not sure if its true or not, I probably wouldn't bet on it.

Atticus wrote:

This is an interesting idea, though, how food links in with other issues particularly religious issues / edicts. ( as indicated by thread title "Fish, Friday").

Eg I have a Muslim work colleague who did the Hajj pilgrimage in Dec. Never a practicing Muslim, he is now trying to be a bit more orthodox. He can't be bothered going to Mosque apart from at Eid-time, so he has tried to avoid eating haram ( forbidden) food since Hajj - ie eating halal.

Wot a trial that is proving to be. I don't believe he'll keep it up but I wish him well anyway.

Do we really associate food with any other life / religious edicts anymore?

Oh yes we do - on a pragmatic note, have you tried to get sausagemeat or cranberries in the last week or two?

Seasonality has a lot to do with why foods are associated with certain celebrations and some show an overlap between the seasonality and the symbolism, like lamb at Easter.

Nigella Lawson has a great cookbook called 'Feast' about food for particular celebrations.

I've been toying with the notion of having a family and friend gathering on February 1 to celebrate the beginning of Spring and to my disappointment, I've been getting the response "oh leave it for another month" until the weather is better. From my perspective, celebrating the first of spring in March is missing the point. The snowdrops are out, it's St Brigid's Day, Imbolc... it's all about now, not then.

ibis wrote:

Actually, the more I look at that....the Irish aren't great fish-eaters, and have a very small fleet.

But we do have the two biggest trawlers in Europe registered in Killybegs (by the McHugh family), the Atlantic Dawn and last year the Johanna Maria.

ibis wrote:

Our contribution to the over-fishing (both as consumers and harvesters), while not negligible, is in the penny place compared to the over-fishing done by nations who do eat a far wider range than us, so I rather doubt the relevance of that to the problem.

I'd agree with Kate P that eating a narrower range of fish contributes more to over fishing.
I'm our trawlers catch loads of edible fish which they then dump back into the sea because of EU quotas but also because there would be no market for them in Ireland.

I've seen the catch logs of boats in Ros a Mhil and was surprised by the wide range of fish they land. Much of which you may see in a fish shop but you wouldn't see in Tesco.

Irish waters are teeming with mackerel. I like it but a lot of people find it too oily.
I got a fishing line as a christmas present, handmade by the person who gave it to me, to fish for mackerel from my kayak!

eoinmn wrote:

ibis wrote:

Actually, the more I look at that....the Irish aren't great fish-eaters, and have a very small fleet.

But we do have the two biggest trawlers in Europe registered in Killybegs (by the McHugh family), the Atlantic Dawn and last year the Johanna Maria.

ibis wrote:

Our contribution to the over-fishing (both as consumers and harvesters), while not negligible, is in the penny place compared to the over-fishing done by nations who do eat a far wider range than us, so I rather doubt the relevance of that to the problem.

I'd agree with Kate P that eating a narrower range of fish contributes more to over fishing.
I'm our trawlers catch loads of edible fish which they then dump back into the sea because of EU quotas but also because there would be no market for them in Ireland.

I've seen the catch logs of boats in Ros a Mhil and was surprised by the wide range of fish they land. Much of which you may see in a fish shop but you wouldn't see in Tesco.

Everybody seems to say this happens and is lunatic, but it still keeps on happening. Wouldn't a bigger mesh of net make more sense?

Mackerel needs something really sharp to cut the oiliness - gooseberry sauce is my favourite.

studiorat wrote:

Edo wrote:

Kalamari soup for lunch

Not Fish, Octopus...
Sorry to be pedantic.

My fave: Mackrel, lettuce, scallion, tomato and fresh green chilli in a bread fresh roll. Barbecued on a boat on moored on the Bosphorus, Istanbul.

That Turkish Mackerel, sounds almost better than the way the Portuguese do it on those bbq stalls...
Fresh mackerel has a meaty, even gamy, flavour which is enough to work through green chilli.

Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall - is that the blokes name? he of River Cottage fame is very passionate about the seasonality of food and involved in the slow food movement. If I ahd the time its something I'd really like to know more about.

He mentions strawberries and tomatoes as two products you can get year round which are almost tasteless when purchased in supermarkets. The difference in taste between tesco strawberries and wexford strawberries you get on the roadside during the summer is quite remakeable.