Three Days in Brixham with Alfie

Three days in Brixham

A chef who can buy fish from anyone spent three days buying it with us.

Three mornings on the market. Three fish. Three recipes you can cook tonight.

Alfie cooks at Four Boys in Cornwall. He has cooked in London, and he has cooked at our own Seahorse in Dartmouth. He knows what good fish looks like and he can get it from anyone he wants.

So we asked him to come to Brixham for three mornings, stand on the market with us at four in the morning, pick the fish himself, and then cook it across the yard while it was still that fresh.

We didn't tell him what to cook. We didn't know what would be on the market. That was rather the point.

Day one: Red mullet

4:10 in the morning, and there isn't much red mullet.

Alfie's first market. We walk the hall, look at ray wings and thornbacks, and find a handful of red mullet worth having. Not many. So we pick the best box, because that is the whole job.

Back at the unit he cooks the fillets skin-side down, then finishes them poaching in a broth of mussels, tomato and white wine, with orzo.

Pan-fried red mullet with orzo and mussels

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Day two: Dover sole

The fish hadn't come out of rigor mortis yet.

This is the one that makes the argument for us. A pollack on the slab so fresh the flesh was still iridescent. Alfie asks how fresh we want it. The honest answer is this fresh, every day.

We pick a Dover sole, have it skinned and trimmed downstairs, and carry it across the road. Alfie floors it, pans it in butter, and finishes it with Morecambe Bay brown shrimps.

Dover sole meunière with Morecambe Bay shrimp butter

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Day three: Turbot

Two boxes of turbot. One we bought, one we walked past.

Fifteen boats in, and one single day-boat turbot on the whole market. We look at a bigger fish from a boat that had been out a week, and pass on it. We look at another that is beautiful on the outside and full of roe on the inside, so less meat and a worse price for you, and pass on that too.

The one we buy is gillnetted, off the Twin Sisters, landed that morning. Alfie roasts it whole on a bed of leek, fennel, celery and shallot.

Whole roast turbot with green and white vegetables

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Why an extra day matters

We didn't script this bit. Sitting down to eat the Dover sole, Alfie started talking about buying fish in London.

There is always an extra day on it, he said. Always a lag, always more transport in between, and it always leads to an inferior quality. What you have here, that really tight short supply chain, is the key to it.

That is a chef who buys from the best suppliers in the country, telling us the fish is better here. Not because we are clever, but because of where we are standing.

Brixham is England's most valuable fishing port. Our fishmonger is a stone's throw from the auction hall. We buy at four in the morning, from boats we know by name, and we pack it the same day. When you order, that is the fish that arrives next day.

We can't shorten the chain any further. There isn't any further.

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"On the last morning, watching us turn down two turbot before buying one: the joys of being here is that you can actually see the difference."

"And on the turbot itself, the most technically ambitious of the three: ironically, potentially the most home kitchen friendly."

Cook it yourself

Every recipe here is a home recipe. No blast chillers, no brigade, no equipment you don't own. Alfie cooked all three in a domestic kitchen with a pan and an oven.

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