In August shoals of tourists on cruise ships are not the only visitors to these shores, thousands of Mackerel and Herring also spend their late summers here. Small boats land their boxes of glittering fish onto the piers and marinas, herring shining silver in the evening sun and the tiger striped mackerel glimmering with their blue and green hues as if they were carrying the aurora on their back. Now of the two fish of late summer Mackerel is king on these islands.
Years ago, Herring held the title, a booming industry across the north Atlantic, boats would land here with herring piled high on the decks to get the ‘herring girls’, who are now for many of us our mothers and grandmothers, to gut and pack them into barrels of salt to preserve the bounty of the season.
Mackerel didn’t have such a following, as Alfie, a dear old fisherman from Burra once told me: “My midder wid’na touch a mackerel, fir if you left dem to rot, dey wid attract da black clocks” (black beetles) which must have been considered a thing of terrible luck.
How times have changed, and even Alfie himself was quite possibly the biggest mackerel fan on these isles, eating one for breakfast, lunch and dinner when the season rolled around, a smile spreading across his face when he was handed a plate with a mackerel fillet on it.
While amongst Shetlander’s each year there is a debate on the best way to prepare and cook mackerel, the one thing that everyone agrees on is it must be fresh, even better if you have caught it yourself. You will hear people argue if you are meant to fry or grill, coat them in flour or oatmeal, or set them on the heat naked, to bathe themselves in their own oils.
This authors preference is to do just as that old Burra fisherman taught her, coat the fillets in seasoned flour (lots of salt and pepper) then set them into a hot pan which has been heating a few tablespoons of oil.
Let them spit and crackle for a few minutes on each side until they are a pale gold then take them out the pan. You can either serve these with tatties that have been boiled in heavily salted water or, if you have one lying around, slice up an apple, preferably one with a little sharpness to it, and fry the slices in the oil left from the mackerel. You will find it to be a sweet, sour, and savoury delight; the crisp and peppery coating on the mackerel giving way to lip-smacking oily flesh within. A tender apple slice providing a welcome sweetness and acidity to cut through that fat.
Of course, what tends to happen is that many of us end up with more mackerel than we can eat this time of year. People pack their freezers full and then despair at their fortune when another hundred weight of fillets show up at their door, often from a kind neighbour who has already stuffed their own freezer to the brim.
This is when I suggest you give preserving mackerel a go, take a leaf out of our own history book and be like the herring girls, salt them.
Now you can simply sprinkle salt on them or make a brine, but by pulling some of that moisture out of the fish with salt you are extending its shelf life, not only that but you are intensifying and enhancing the flavour of the fish.
Once you have salted them there is a myriad of ways you could then serve the mackerel or preserve them further. You could set them into jars with olive oil and spices, seal and plunge them into boiling water to can them. You could mix some sugar and spices into your salt cure and serve up some Mackerel Gravlax.
You could hang the fillets in a chamber, light a smouldering wood fire at the bottom and further preserve the mackerel with smoke, wisps of wood dancing around the fillets and knitting its flavour into the flesh.
There is an abundance of fish here to work with just now, and with a little bit of inspiration you will find there is an abundance of things to make with them.
Click here to try Marian's Gravad Mackerel with Dill Cream Sauce