Today, I apologised to a fish

Greetings from the Isle of Mull!  After a week of bustle, weird art, gorgeous food and slightly too much whisky, we have settled into our charming apartment overlooking Tobermory with the sole intention of loafing around for a bit.

We did go sea fishing today though.  And, of course, the weather - which has so far been pretty decent - immediately went to Full Scottish Mode: unrelenting, grey mizzle.  It was not the best day to be out at sea, although, as I observed to the D, it did give me a renewed appreciation for fisherman.

I am strongly of the opinion that if one chooses to partake wholeheartedly in the consumption of animals (which I do) one has to try not to be squeamish about the realities involved.  Nevertheless, extracting a fish from a hook is a disconcerting experience, especially when said fish is in the midst of its death throes and your fingers are thoroughly numb.  And I never really thought of fish as creatures who bleed.  Which is why I found myself, soaked to the skin, murmuring "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," to a large mackerel with a hook through its mouth as I tried to convey it from the end of my line to the tub of bounty.

Still, we are warm and dry now and for supper we had the freshest of fresh mackerel, lightly pan fried, on a slice of buttered toast.  Not the most elaborate meal of the holiday, but definitely one that was thoroughly earned.

Yum.

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The hunter gatherers

We love the idea of foraging for food, we really do.  Unfortunately, when you live in the middle of a big city and you work full time, the reality of the situation is that most of your foraging gets done in Waitrose.

We did have some opportunities on holiday though, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Winkles, from the rockpools around Portuairk. D used to winkle a lot as a child, and considers this an essential part of any seaside holiday.  If you've never had them, they are very akin to snails with a slight whiff of the sea - gorgeous just ferreted out of their shells and dragged through garlic butter.  Since we managed to gather such a lot (the pile you see before represents about a half of our total haul) we also had them on toast for lunch one day, and made a little winkle and bacon ragu sauce to accompany...

...the fresh mackerel that we caught on our sea angling trip.  We have been meaning to do that for the last few years and, as expected, it was enormous fun.  I must admit to a certain amount of squeamishness at first when it came to sliding the mackerel off the hooks - just because I acknowledge the reality of eating living creatures for dinner does not mean I find having their blood, literally, smeared all over my hands particularly easy.  Anyway, D being hunter gatherer in chief did the gutting and the filleting, and then we pan fried them and served them over winkle and bacon pasta.  Top notch stuff.

We have six more mackerel in the freezer and are hoping to have a go at smoking a couple - watch this space (either for a post about smoking fish or one in which our house burns down and we have to sleep in the car).

Finally, there were these little beauties, that we picked in Aros Park, just outside Tobermory:

Mushroom picking can be a surprisingly dangerous business, so we made sure that we only picked those varieties that we were absolutely sure about and that could not be mistaken for anything else.  Simply fried up in butter with garlic and parsley and then served up on toast, these could not have been more delicious.

I don't think, if mackerel fishing is slightly too gory for me, that I am ever going to make it out on a shooting party, or even butchering my own meat, but mushrooms - mushrooms I can cope with.