A fantastic fish course

If you love fish and want some help on how to prepare it, get yourself down to Brighton and Newhaven fish sales (Fish for short), just past Hove lagoon.

So, being someone who loves fish, I found myself falling through the door on a VERY rainy Wednesday evening. I bought with me a vegetarian (she really can't call herself this as she eats fish and admits to loving bacon, but that is a different story) and my phone for picture taking, hence the rubbish photos.

First up was the crab. Having done crab before I was quietly confident but it soon became like one of my lessons at school; a competition of 'who would be the expert and finish first'. However, Jason, our brilliant, friendly and well informed teacher, did not rush us and I was please to see that the vegetarian and I had more crab meat than the others (the veggie was the overall winner- grrrrr!). I also learnt that all crabs have tails, apparently you know it's a male because you cant get it up...........something I found bloody hilarious, but no one else did....

I always like to look my food in the eye

The competition begins.....

Next was squid. This caused much hilarity with the vegetarian not wanting to put her hand in the box of squid (and consequently me whacking her with some tentacles and squeezing guts on to her hand). We were shown how to prepare it by the oh so lovely Jason and were given some cookery tips at the same time (slow or very quick boys and girls!)

The evenings entertainment then carried on with skinning Whiting and then descaling and gutting black breem. I have never been so covered in fish scales and the vegetarian was looking less and less like a vegetarian by this point (she was loving it!).

Beautiful fish-you can't beat Fish for freshness

We finished off by filleting and butterfly filleting mackerel (the next day I stuffed the mackerel with Moroccan cous cous, recipe to follow at a later date)

The course was brilliant; very reasonable (£30 for two hours and a massive bag of fish and seafood) and informative. I would definitely recommend Brighton and Newhaven Fish Sales, both for the course and their fantastic array of Fish; they really are on top of their game. A massive thank you to Jason who ran it; you couldn't have asked for a more patient and lovely lad.

vegetarian with gut covered hands!

The fantastic Jason!

Just a one more thing to prove that the boy is a lucky man. I got home at 9.30 to him asking to see the fish. He then turned to me and asked which one I was cooking for dinner. Now, this makes the boy sound like a prehistoric male, he can look after himself but has become unaccustomed to cooking for himself since being with me. He did, apparently, feel that something 'wasn't quite right' and then realised it was hunger about 5 minutes before I came home!