The beef thing will settle down, we all hope. In the meantime, it is no harm to remind ourselves, that in spite of pollution, some of it produced by our intensive agricultural methods, cattle, pig and other types of farming, our inland fish are still wholesome and available. And inland fish are more humanely killed, it can be argued, than the fish you get from the sea the after hauled up by the ton and, it must be assumed slowly suffocated.
Your river trout is hooked, brought in to the bank before he can get the line entangled in weeds or around a rock, and banged on the head. And, ideally cooked within an hour or two. We are fortunate in the work and dedication of the Central Fisheries Board and their regions - and in the work of fishing clubs.
Other countries, other customs. For example, an Irishman invited to fish high up in the Swiss mountains in the St Gallen district, in the summer of some fifty years ago. Three men, each with rods, waders and a ghillie. Each ghillie had a tank. That's the difference. It was a lovely river, about twenty five yards wide, and two to four feet deep on average. Between ten o'clock and twelve thirty, the Irishman, our diarist, had sixteen trout, around one third of a pound each. (Wouldn't be allowed here, but quite legal there.) Later "there came a fined rise of a dark large fly", and dryfly fishing our man had twelve in an hour. Anyway, our diarist's score for the day was 33 trout. His host had 39. And the third party took fifteen but gave up when he fell in.
Annually, the owner put four thousand yearlings into the river and there was apparently good feeding. Back to the tanks which were carried by each ghillie. They were, of course, to preserve the trout, though you might think that a bit unnecessary. "In the evenings" wrote our diarist, "we talked, after eating large quantities of truite au bleu." Now you might think that this means plunging the living fish into boiling water, thus making it blue, as a lobster turns red but those who have eaten this dish, in Switzerland and France say no. The fish are gutted out; the head is left on.
Where does blue come in? For the one writer who goes into detail explains that as they hit the court bouillon in which they are boiled "the skins will shrivel and break in all directions." Elizabeth David in French Provincial Cooking contents herself with quoting Jean Giono who gives off about the absurdity of cooking trout with butter or almonds and mentions, in passing, "with the exception of truite au blue nobody knows how to cook a trout." Another day, perhaps, Giono's recipe. And have you heard of blauer Aal, blue eel, in German?