Colm O'Gorman's baked hake with a chorizo, parmesan and lemon crumb
Fish is a great ingredient, rich in protein, low in fat and quick and easy to prepare
As I look back, one of the mysteries of my childhood is that we rarely ate fish. Even though I grew up in Wexford, a coastal county with a then vibrant fishing industry, we never really ate much seafood. That was all the more remarkable given that my mother was a real champion of fresh food and a very innovative and creative cook. She went vegetarian in the late seventies, so we ate lots of vegetarian food, which I loved, but fish did not feature much at all. I do not recall it being on the menu much when we ate out either, so I can only imagine that most of the fish that was caught by the Wexford fleet back then went for export.
Times have changed thankfully, and seafood is now very much part of the Irish diet. Sustainability is an ever-increasing concern of course, with species such as cod under huge pressure due to decades of overfishing. This has led to it being swapped for other varieties in fish and chip shops, where other white fish such as pollock or coley are often mislabelled and sold as cod. Both pollock and coley are perfectly good substitutes for cod of course, so perhaps we should just get over ourselves and eat more of them, not least because they are more sustainable than cod.
