NOURRITURE - Partie Trois. Fruit de Mer.

Fish. Fish are the main ingredient in Fish and Chips, Fish Fingers, Fishcakes etc. Generally speaking the larger the fish, the better it tastes. This is due to something called Fishiness. Big fish like Marlin, Swordfish and Sharks taste way better than Sardines, Sprats and Mackerel. It's just a fact. Bigger fish are less Fishy. In a nutshell, fishy fish are the worst... So if you hold a Mackerel up against a Haddock, you can tell in advance - by relative size -  that the Haddock is better. In the fish world, size matters. The fishiest fish known to man is the Red Herring.

There are so many marine fish types, that after about a dozen cool names like Gurnard, Mullet, Tarpon, Conger etc, the Ministry of Fisheries started allocating descriptive names for fish. So now we have species like Ratfish, Catfish, Guitarfish and Monkfish. A Ratfish looks like a rat. A Catfish has whisker type things and long teeth. A Guitarfish actually looks a bit like a guitar and a Monkfish likes to ejaculate into a sponge.

Hostile Organism

Acrylic on canvas. In the private collection of Rob Lancaster.

'Sea Food'. Molluscs. Beasts from the sea. Call it what you will. I call it 'Bait'. It divides people. Not everyone likes Sea Food. Some are too fishy apparently and they look like organs from inside a rat. Let's be honest... sea food looks and smells repulsive. It doesn't make you salivate like bacon, chips or steak. Sea food is consumed under the influence of alcohol. Where I grew up -  Huddersfield Nil - a sea food vendor would trawl the pubs selling cockles, crabs, squid, hammerhead prawns  and all manner of hideous looking shite. This guy never turned up at 8pm though. No point. He knew that people only eat sea food when they are half shitfaced...so he'd turn up at 10pm and make about £1500.





I've eaten nine mussels over my lifetime. Seven of these were on the same day in a Thai restaurant after a quantity of house white. I remember thinking, 'These are vaguely edible.' The remaining two were eaten on two other visits to the same restaurant and I recall almost throwing up my ringpiece some hefty distance. So there you have it. Marine Molluscs are vaguely edible - if one is drunk. Personally I don't think we are designed to eat sea food... We have just evolved to eat some species which don't poison us... Let me elaborate and attempt to validate my point...

Many shellfish, especially bi-valve molluscs harbour nasty toxins and their digestive glands have to be removed. If ingested this could cause paralysis of the respiratory system, convulsions and a slow lingering death. There may also be a powerful, undignified and inconvenient laxative effect. That's a good enough reason not to eat them I think. 



Worlds Apart

Acrylic on canvas. Painted from a reference photo by Rogue Gene colleague,

Aitch

Also, I have always subscribed to the theory that we humans are land based. Many eminent anthropologists agree with me. We have lungs, walk upright and prune easily when under water. Unless we are from Wigan, our eyes are situated on the front of our heads to provide binocular vision to calculate distance. Basically we have adapted to forage and hunt on land. Our digestive systems have developed to be best served and sustained by mammalian and avian flesh, fruit and vegetables. So why the fuck do some people eat squid? It tastes repellant. Stubbornness is the answer. Some people will eat stuff because it's pointless, unusual and repulsive looking. These people don't prefer molluscs to real food, it's just that they like making a spectacle of themselves and have no gag reflex. They would eat fox snot if it was on the menu.

Basically, beasts from the sea are in a different food chain. They are meant to sustain each other... marine life predating on marine life. A seperate ecosystem in it's own right. The two should not cross over. You never see a Stingray flopping about in a field looking for fucking voles. It knows it's place...Similarly, an Angler Fish doesn't wait on the sea bed, mouth agape,

hoping a hapless stoat will swim into it's maw like a pillock. No...It is clearly biding its time waiting for a pollock.

Piranhas

Acrylic on canvas

Anyway, back to my ongoing Graphic Novel project, 'Grinding Nemo'... The plot is a very familiar one... Disafected son of a Salazar era Portuguese Trawlerman, rediscovers his carnal desires for Conch.

To learn even more about food, read the entries  NOURRITURE - Partie Une and Deux under the September tab to the right  --->

All artwork copyright Rob Kirbyson