Column

As a passionate foodie, amateur cook, and a person fixated on quality produce, there are only certain things which I feel confident of buying. The Trikaya stall in Crawford Market is often a cornucopia of surprises — endives, chicory, lollo rosso, juicy fennel bulbs, even artichokes, but sometimes one meets with acute disappointment.

It is exceedingly difficult to plan a menu when you do not know what will turn up and that, perhaps, is the charm, the glorious uncertainty.Well, salads are easily substitutable and there are few guests of mine who can really, with any authority, pronounce on the leaves.

But what about the main course? Well if it is not meat, it has to be fish. Fish is very demanding; not knowing how to buy fresh fish is potentially dangerous, given the state of our waters, dodgy cold storage and pervasive lack of hygiene.

Even the freshest fish may have unacceptable levels of mercury and can be potentially life threatening. It is a mystery to me as to why the BMC does not impose stricter hygiene in some of these municipal licensed markets. The tragedy is that many people now prefer to go to shops which have sprung up recently offering frozen sea food, hygienically packed and fixed priced, and in doing so they miss out on a great experience.

If you go to the fish markets such as Sassoon Docks — and I wouldn’t recommend doing so now, as the monsoon season is a rather sad time — you will be surprised by the variety of seafood available. I was astonished on a trip to the Khar fish market to discover skate available as well as the grouper known in the Gulf as the “hammour”. You can get red and white snapper, although the sizes can be humongous.

I have never understood why people buy canned tuna when there is ample fresh tuna available and cheaply. There is nothing quite like fresh tuna, if one has a tin of anchovies ready: a Nicoise salad is a splendid thing to make, colourful, tasty and healthy, with glistening black olives, red and yellow peppers, new potatoes, green beans and red onions. Calamari or squid is easily available, as are clams (mussels not so and can be dicey) and comparatively cheaply.

The other charm of these visits is the interaction with the Koli women who run the stalls; they are charming and, in some cases, positively flirtatious, enticing you to spend more money than you want to on their produce.

Going abroad widens one’s horizons, the fishmongers of the old Billingsgate market in London, the great Fulton Street Fish Market in New York, and the daddy of them of all, Tsukiji in Tokyo — as an emporium for seafood for the most discerning it is without equal.It is the size of around 40 football pitches.

When I was in Tokyo a few years back one of my most remarkable experiences was visiting this great market at the crack of dawn, marvelling at the variety of tuna, crustaceans, salmon, and the most exotic seafood on display such as sea urchins. I saw a huge tuna being lugged across the floor weighing around 500 lb and being carved up by electric saws.

You understand the size of the market when you realise that over 2,500tons of fish are transacted daily at a price of around $23 million a day. It is also an incredibly cheap place to have fresh sushi in various stalls leading off the market.