| A taste of Cornwall |
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| Written by Claire Hopley, 2005 | |
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Page 1 of 2 Claire Hopley goes West to taste Cornwall's rich variety of local fare from pasties to pilchards, saffron buns to seafood, plus some regional specialities with fascinating names like stargazy pie, Yarg, splits and heavy cake. Supermarkets now stock foods from all over the UK, so it is easy to forget that regional foods and regional cooking still exist. One of the pleasures of travelling around the country is discovering specialities that don't appear outside their region - or if they do, taste much better in their home territory.Cornwall is especially rich in local fare, and while its pasties and clotted cream are famous, it also has the less familiar treats such as saffron buns and thunder and lightning splits, and old-time specialities like stargazy pie and scrowled pilchards. There are, too, such modern delicacies as smoked salmon and trout, sheep milk yogurt and Yarg cheese wrapped in nettles. The history of Cornish food, like the history of Cornwall itself, is tied to its wild shores and stony land. The rocky coasts harbour oysters, scallops, mussels and crab, while the seas teem with fish: cod, ling and pollack, with mullet, megrim, sea bass and fierce-looking John Dory, plus handsome mackerel and shoals of bright, slippery pilchards. Once landed on a fishmonger's slab or a restaurant menu, many of these sea creatures can be expensive, so it is ironic that historically the most significant of all Cornwall's fish has been the lowly pilchard. The Latin name is Sardinus pilchardus and, as it suggests, they are sardines - full-grown specimens of the diminutive fish we buy in tins. They swim up from Spain to Cornwall, their northernmost outpost, between June and March and in the past 'huers' stood on the cliffs waiting to spot the shoals and holler to fishermen to get out their boats. The catches were enormous and kept thousands busy preparing fish for market, either fresh, canned, or much more unusually, salted. Cornish people used to salt fish for themselves in stone jars called bussas. But commercially salted pilchards are an old but little-known speciality. Since at least 1555, they have been exported to Italy, where they were traditional fare for the many fast days of the Roman Catholic Church. Packed in wooden barrels stencilled with their Italian name Salacche Inglese (which means English salt fish) they are still made at the The Pilchard Works in Newlyn - a working museum that overlooks the harbour where the fishing boats dock. Here, the owner, Nick Howell, has expanded the market for fresh pilchards by marketing them as fresh sardines, documented Cornwall's traditional pilchard fishery with an array of handsomely presented objects and photographs, and maintained salted sardine production. "As soon as the pilchards come off the boat we layer them with Spanish sea salt," he explains. "They stay in the salt for weeks while the natural enzymes work and the salt draws out the liquid. Then we press them. The fish emerge from the ancient presses flat and firm, although just about bendable. They are now about 15 per cent salt, so they will keep for up to two years in the fridge and about five months outside." Salted pilchards taste ferociously strong. "They have the sort of flavour that initially makes you think 'How could anyone eat that?'" says Rick Stein, the well-known Padstow restaurateur and an authority on cooking fish. "But then as a background to other familiar flavours it becomes the essence of the dish." Nick Howell agrees, explaining that in Italy a couple of pilchards would be enough for six people. "They grill them, which intensifies the flavour, and brings off the skin and the scales, then they flake them and sprinkle them over polenta. It is a contrast between the powerful flavour and the bland," he says. "There is a village in Italy where they make a salad of salted pilchards with oranges." While Howell maintains the tradition of sending salacche to Italy, he has also worked to bring Cornish sardines back into English supermarkets, packing them both in jars and in the traditional flat tins decorated with paintings by artists of the Newlyn School. As for the Cornish, one of their traditional ways of cooking pilchards, a speciality of Mousehole, was to place them in a pie-dish with their heads resting on the rim. Good things such as herbs or bacon were hidden among them, and a cover tucked over them, leaving the heads exposed - looking for all the world as if the fish were gazing at the heavens - hence the name 'stargazy' pie. They also cooked pilchards on a grid-iron, 'scrowling' them first, splitting them and then cooking them as a pair back sides outwards. Or, they might team them with potatoes and simmer them in thin cream, which was called dippie. Freshness guaranteedThis simple technique is typical of Cornish ways with fish. With sparklingly fresh supplies always available, fish is invariably a wise choice in local restaurants, most of which follow the Cornish practice of showcasing its excellence by cooking it simply. Typical dishes are the delectable Fisherman's Pie of the Navy Inn in Penzance, where potato slices are showered with a little cheese roof over a mixture of seafood delicately stewed in cream. |
