The grey mullet (whole
fish) is a new visitor to the icy shores of the Tesco fish counter.
It is a fairly large fish with equally large scales and very popular
with our Chinese customers. It appears to be a popular part of their
cuisine where fish is involved. This is where most of our sales have
come from – with an occasional sale to the English customers. It
looks similar to a larger version of our £3 sea bass – with a
softer belly- and on average our grey mullet have been costing the
customers somewhere between £5 and £6. Tesco source their grey mullet as a wild fish caught by trawler, gill nets or similar nets.
I purchased one the
other day and decided to get out the barbecue. Crazy I know! Just for
once it was sunny weather and the thin dried branches from some local
pine trees smelled great as I got the BBQ fired up. I cut the fish
into chunky bone in steaks to be cooked flesh down. They took about
ten minutes on the barbecue and I turned them three or four times –
always keeping the skin away from the direct heat and bars. Being so
thin the skin on any fish will burn if sat directly on the bbq.
As it turned out I
cooked it alongside some lamb cutlets cut from a French trimmed rack
of lamb. In the end I decided to eat the delicious mullet with a few
mixed olives and feta cheese and the lamb chops with a few cherry
tomatoes and mozzarella cheese that I happened to have in the fridge.
The cooked grey mullet
had a distinctive almost earthy flavour that I personally liked but I
have read that it is not universally loved. The BBC Food website
claims that the earthy taste of the fish can be can be reduced by
'the addition of robust and lightly acidulated sauces, dressings and
marinades featuring lemon, white wine, vinegar, capers and garlic.'
It also adds that grey mullet roe is a delicacy smoked and is
traditionally used in taramasalata.
The chef Raymond Blanc
is a keen advocate of using this fish to make an excellent fish soup.
He includes a pinch of saffron powder, five bruised garlic cloves,
five sprigs of fresh thyme, carrot, a fennel bulb and some black
pepper in his recipe. Chef Simon Rimmer loves grey mullet with
yoghurt potatoes. My mates the Si and Dave – The Hairy Bikers –
suggest the usage of grey mullet fillets as an ingredient in their
recipe for a seafood pearl barley paella.
Mitch Tonks – in his
excellent book 'Fish – the complete fish & seafood companion'
has a great recipe for grey mullet with mussels, roasted garlic and
oregano and a separate recipe for baked grey mullet with dill and
brandy. He is not alone in his grey mullet enthusiasms and it seems
that there are plenty of recipes out there to try. Mitch also
enthuses on the website
www.cooked.com
that his first experience of ginger with steamed fish (mullet) was in
a local Chinese restaurant in his youth. He suggests that grey mullet
is an underrated fish and can often be found at a very reasonable
price on one's fishmonger's slab. He proposes that when buying grey
mullet that you ask the fishmonger if the fish was sea caught or from
an estuary. Estuarine fish have a slightly muddier flavour than those
caught out at sea. Either way they are both good and not to be missed
when in prime fresh condition.
In life the fish itself
prefers brackish coastal waters and lagoons with varying salinity.
The are common throughout the Mediterranean and along the
northwestern coast of the Black Sea. They are also found in the
eastern Atlantic, from Southern Norway to South Africa. They are a
common summer visitor to southern British shores, sometimes extending
into the North Sea.
For those interested
the grey mullet has a variety of international names.
UK: Thin-lipped grey
mullet (also thick-lipped)
France: Mulet porc
Greece: Mavráki
Portugal:
Tainha
Spain:
Morragute
Italy:
(Cefalo) Botolo
Germany:
Dünnlippige
Meeräsche
Incidentally, the lamb rack cutlets were perfectly cooked and easily regulated on the gently heated periphery of the barbeque cooking rack. With both the grey mullet and the lamb chops there were some bones to negotiate (deal with) but that is part of the barbeque experience, non?
