The sea, the sea

"Childhood memories of building sandcastles, rummaging in rock pools and splashing in the surf stay with us like little else."

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

The above photograph is from my collection of long ago negatives digitised on my scanner, complete with scratches, like the crescent moon-like one above my son's head at the front of the boat. We are in the Maldives with my young nephew in tow - he was on a trip to Australia with us, after our own trip - business associated for David - to England and Montreux. On the way back we stopped for a few days in the Maldives. Which is where David took this photograph

Why this photograph? Well it's my current computer desktop and it completely epitomises for me, those moments in time, that you have completely forgotten - I do not remember a boat ride - but which define those beautifully calm, almost other worldly days. At the front of the boat, are myself, with an afro hairstyle that you cannot see and in a bikini, seated near the prow. At the very front is my younger son; standing and looking ahead - as he still does - is my older son; and behind them - bending down at that moment is my nephew - a rather sad young boy who has led a sad life I believe. But I do believe that in those few days he was happy. We all were. And we were young. I love this photo - that David must have taken - he does not like boats - the colours - probably not real as the negative was old - are dreamy. The whole scene is dreamy - "roses sopp'd in pearly dew" - coincidentally the last words in a poem by Philip James Bailey - whoever he is/was, used as a counterpoint to my daily artwork - a posed young lady in the 18th century. Coincidentally appropriate.

So the sea, the sea.

"Who can resist the great primal, elemental pull of the sea? Even if you're no sailor, it's a near certainty that you have been drawn to the sea's edge at some point in your youth, to stand on the brink of the vast ocean, and dabble on the margins of our known universe: our shores." Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall

Yes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall because this is actually a first recipe post - a quickie I think, about foraging on the seashore. But before I get on to that a last few words about my personal sea.

My grandmother lived in Portsmouth - one of Britain's great seaports. I won't say that it was beautiful but there was the sea, and a stony beach. We spent hours there digging at the sandy edge and exploring the rockpools, as we also did on holidays in the west country. I loved to be on the beach even in the cold as here.

Exploring rock pools was one of my favourite things to do, peacefully for hours on end, staring into those little worlds of colourful and delicate little plants, curious seashells and rocks and if you were very lucky tiny sea creatures.

On both sides of our family there are seamen. My father - a lone seaman on his side but a great lover of the sea - it was his chosen career and I think was a great loss when he finally gave it up to help my mother at home. No - I now remember there were also shipwrights on his mother's side of the family. On my mother's side there is a very long line of sailors and shipwrights stretching back beyond my investigations. And this lingers on in my older son's passion for travel to exotic lands.

On David's side there are none, and David really does not like to be on the sea - and yet he too loves the sea side. It was one of the major attractions of coming to Australia - sun, sand, the sea - the space of distant horizons.

But enough of the personal history, for this is actually a first recipe post - the next in my River Cottage foraging set - Edible Seashore, written by John Wright who wrote the Hedgerow book.

Like the hedgerow book this one is largely irrelevant to us here in Australia, because of the specificity of some of the plants, and animals of the British seashore.

There are similarities however, in how to go about the whole process of gathering from the seashore. Curiously he does not include fish because he is confining himself the shore and to actually entering the water up to waist height. I wonder why he did not mention fishing from the piers and the rocks - a great Australian pastime that I gather from a newspaper article is being revived by the young, now that the under 16s are banned from social media. Interesting.

There are also a few similarities - more with the shellfish and crustaceans described here than with the plants. For example there is this recipe - it's not the first recipe - for Cockles with chorizo - a very simple dish for the small shellfish that we call pipis here or vongole if you are eating them in an Italian restaurant. It's just cockles, chorizo, olive oil, lemon juice and parsley. Cook the chorizo, add the cockles and lemon juice, cover until the cockles open and sprinkle with parsley. Done. Hardly a recipe really.

I do not know much about Australian shellfish or crustaceans, but I'm guessing that there are several recipes in this book that could be adapted from their British equivalents. A crab is a crab to me and we certainly have crabs - and lobsters, crayfish as well as mussels and oysters, and there are plenty of good-looking recipes for those..

The same could also be said of the seaweed. And for all I know maybe the seaweed is the same. Kelp crisps for example - I know we have kelp here. This recipe does not exist online, however again this is hardly a recipe. You simply cut the kelp into squares and fry in oil at 180ºC for a mere 5 seconds - "they will be ready when the surface bubbles up." But - and it sounds like a big but to me:

"Be careful not to overcook, as the flavour of burnt seaweed is one that will stay with you for some days."

One for the foraging fiends this one I think. But there are other seaweed recipes that might suit.

The plants however are more difficult. Samphire is a prime example, which I have just discovered is a native of Australia, and yet we don't seem to have discovered it as food as yet. Or am I completely out of the loop?

Here I come to the actual first recipe - Steamed Alexanders. I wrote about Alexanders a long time ago - as a first recipe in fact - in the River Cottage A-Z book - A is for Alexanders, Z is for Zanders - A-Z. I have now discovered that we do in fact have them here - of course some British immigrant brought them some time ago, but they are not at all common. So I doubt you will find them.

In spite of them appearing in several guises in this book, however, it seems that they are not all that popular in Britain either, perhaps because - as John Wright says:

"The simple reason for its usurpation [by celery] is that Alexanders is something of an acquired taste - one of those robust flavours that can easily offend the bland modern palate."

It is a seaside plant but not in the sense of being on or near the shore, as it usually grows a little inland - half a mile or so says John Wright - beside the road and in laybys:

"Quite why it needs to be near the sea but not necessarily near enough to see it or smell it is something of a mystery."

Possibly named after Alexander the Great - who was not a good guy really. Also not to be confused with similar plants that can be poisonous. In Britain they have poisonous plants and mushrooms instead of deadly insects and animals.

An oddity. As are many of the things in this book, but if you are into shellfish and crustaceans, or need to know more about how to forage on the seashore, then there might be something for you in here. For me - no. But it was next on my list, and I did want to somehow get my Maldives photograph into a post somehow.

YEARS GONE BY

March 25

2025 - Crispy fried eggs

2024 - The laughing cow has the last laugh

2023 - Nothing

2022 - A quote

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Olde England

2018 - The rich/poor gap - always and forever there

2017 - Baklava