Market

I read in The Times the other day that a decline in the number of sharks in our seas has resulted in a boom in the numbers of skate and ray, which has in turn been disastrous for stocks of oysters and scallops on which they apparently feed.

This is complicated news.

First of all, however much one knows about the endangered status of most breeds of shark due to Oriental trawlermen cutting off their fins for the tables of the rich and throwing them back in the sea to die horribly, one just can’t help, on reading the words “decline in the number of sharks”, expressing a tiny sigh of relief and thinking that one day it might be safe to go back in the water. (Ever since reading that sharks attack human swimmers because they take us for wounded sea lions, I have adopted an armless and legless stroke, much like the Man from Atlantis, in the hope of being taken for an extremely healthy seal who just isn’t in a rush. Unfortunately, the stroke is ineffective as a means of propulsion and can only be done safely in the shallows at the edge of the beach, where you run the risk of an attempt by Greenpeace volunteers to refloat you.)

Secondly, I had no idea that skate lived on oysters. How on earth does a skate eat an oyster? Think how tricky it is to open an oyster when you’ve got two hands and ten fingers and an oyster knife. Then imagine you’ve got no fingers. Then imagine you've got no arms. Then imagine you’re just basically a giant bath mat. How the hell do you do it? (And don’t forget you’re not sitting nicely at a table in Scott’s with a flute of poo – you’re swimming over your oyster at speed, no doubt with a hungry shark behind you.)

Most bafflingly of all, I have not eaten a skate in ten years, because I read in one of my goody-goody, hemp-jacketed save-the-world food manuals that skate stocks were even more threatened than those of cod. Now, are we saying that for all those years the problem was that skates were being overfished by sharks? In which case, I feel a bit of a mug. It’s all very well my laying off unethical ingredients in the hope that you lot will follow suit, but I feel that this column fights a losing battle where it seeks, merely by setting an example, to influence the behaviour of the most dangerous predator on the planet.

So what do I do now? Do I step manfully into the breach left by the disappearing sharks and eat as many skate as I can so as to protect the oysters? And if I do, am I not then depriving sharks of their favourite food, threatening their survival yet further, as well as making them more likely to attack me when I’m bobbing on a Lilo in the Mediterranean, reading Madame Bovary and trying desperately not to look like a skate?

I tell you, it’s an ethical quagmire. And it’s best solved by a trip to Market in Camden Town, where the pollack, mash, leeks and salsa verde is £12 a go and there isn’t a cod in sight. Or a skate. Or a shark. Although there are oysters. Maldon rocks at £8.50 for six, which I think puts them well beyond the pockets of both skate and ray.

It was my aunt and uncle who found the place, before Christmas, and e-mailed me to say they thought I’d like it, and so after I’d visited, and been impressed, I e-mailed back to say “I went to Market” – and ever since I keep thinking of “This little piggy went to market”. It’s an odd little rhyme, about which I hadn’t thought in ages:

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none,
And this little piggy cried “wee, wee, wee” all the way home.

This little piggy had roast beef? Like it was a good thing. What sort of an idea is that to put in the heads of children who may grow up to become farmers? Maybe that’s where it all started, all this cannibalistic husbandry one hears about. Maybe it all started with some farmer playing with his kid’s toes and thinking to himself: “This little piggy had roast beef, now there be an idea. Mmm, and this little piggy ate sheep meat, and this little sheep ate other sheep, and these here chickens ate that there cow over there who was looking a bit wobbly…”

But not at Market, where everything is free range and lovely jubbly. The little piggies who come here get their cheeks braised ever so slowly in little cast-iron pots with morcilla (Spanish black pudding) and peas – a lovely rich winter starter – or, if they are Gloucestershire Old Spots, they get their bellies stuffed with prunes, roasted and served on lentils with apple sauce.

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