From ocean to plate

I was planning to open a new restaurant soon and went with my daughter to the beach near where I live to look for stones that I could use to serve the butter on. Whilst choosing the stones with my daughter, I had an idea about a mackerel dish he I planning to include on the menu in the new restaurant. I was already aware that in Japanese cuisine, mackerel is often cured in sugar, followed by salt water. I thought to myself ’why have I never heard of someone curing fish in seawater?’ So I started to experiment cooking with seawater. I first wanted to check that it would be safe for consumption and then wanted to perfect the recipe for my sea salt-cured mackerel dish. I literally got a couple of buckets, brought it back to my home kitchen, brought it to the boil to boil off all the impurities, passed it through Brita water filter. That extracted all of the grit and the sand. Then I flavoured the hot seawater with more salt, sugar, vinegar and herbs and spices and experimented until he worked out the best water temperature to cure the fish. I was extremely pleased with the finished result; when you bit into that it was just like tasting the sea. The sea salt-cured mackerel dish, served with broccoli and warm honey, eventually made it onto the menu at the new restaurant and it was one of the most favourite dishes people have had; people were raving about it and we had people saying it was the best dish they’d eaten in their life. It was something that started out as just a simple thought of looking out into the sea and it just turned out into something that we produced in a busy London kitchen.

Ben