We’re celebrating the world’s finest consolation meals by asking cooks and meals writers from quite a lot of backgrounds to speak concerning the dishes they love.
Johnny Godden, founding father of Flying Fish Seafoods, discusses the significance of seasonality in seafood, the pains of the seafood trade and Johnny’s childhood favourite, fish and chips.
Described by Elystan Avenue chef Phil Howard as “merely the most effective fishmonger within the nation”, Johnny Godden’s journey to managing director of Flying Fish Seafoods started when he left college in Gloucester and joined a seafood provider, working his manner up from filletor to purchaser after which gross sales supervisor. The expertise impressed him to maneuver to Cornwall to be nearer to the supply of the fish and arrange his personal enterprise, with an ethos of accountable sourcing at its core.
“I did not do effectively at college – I left a yr early with no finals – however my brother made me wash containers on the fish manufacturing unit the place he labored. It was nice to see all of the fish. After I noticed salmon for the primary time , once I first noticed a John Dory or a giant turbot I believed it was fairly superb and the vitality of everybody working collectively, getting issues finished I beloved it.
“I used to be filleting and getting higher and sooner. I nonetheless take pleasure in filleting to today – it is fairly therapeutic.
“By my mid-twenties I had labored my manner as much as gross sales supervisor and had my very own concepts about the way to run a enterprise. Step one was to get nearer to the supply of the fantastic merchandise, so I packed up my automobile and moved to Cornwall and Flying Fish was born Over time Flying Fish has grown from a one man band to the corporate we’re right this moment We’re lucky to have constructed an unimaginable listing of relationships with many Michelin starred cooks and eating places .
“The pivotal second was once I was 19. I spent a day at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire and noticed not solely the prime quality seafood but additionally the superb fruit and greens produced from their backyard. Solely these seeing distinctive produce emphasised the significance of manufacturing meals of the very best caliber.
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“I come from a giant household. My mom was a vegetarian and we had been raised vegetarian. She was a single mom, so she needed to prepare dinner lots – and on a finances. She cooked huge pies or huge bowls of pasta and issues like that.
“It was like feeding time on the zoo! Meals had been essential – being collectively – however it’s humorous as a result of regardless that I used to be raised vegetarian, I like meat and I like fish and I like offal.
“Fingers down, the factor I would favor over most issues is fish and chips. I am unable to keep in mind the primary time I ate it, however I do keep in mind it being round on a regular basis.
“I keep in mind from a younger age somebody got here in with a bag of containers in it. You opened it, steam got here out and the fish and chips had been a bit of soggy at occasions, however there was one thing very magical about it. I favored it whenever you would get actually low cost white bread – a slice with thick bits of margarine.
“We’ve a very good fish and chip store in our city however the bread and butter is actually fancy which is not good for fish and chips. Have to be low cost white bread. I purchase my fish in a separate field to my chips , then I hurry house as quick as I can, in order that once I open the field the fish remains to be fairly crispy, I add plenty of salt and vinegar, then I wrap it in a sort of fries bone: one slice, not two, rolled over and crushed And the opposite factor I have been actually into recently is mushy peas I put a great deal of vinegar and pepper in my mushy peas and dip my ass in it.
