Proud Desperate Versatile Opportunistic Forager: Fishy business

Jimbaran beachside fish market, Bali

Was it every Sunday that we went from mass to the Colombo fish market in Pettah to buy mud crabs for lunch, their massive front claws immobilised by small wooden peg inserted just where they emerged from the shell, their bodies tied in string for ease of carrying, string which we eagerly awaited the cutting of on the kitchen floor back home, the preliminary to us chasing the crab around the polished concrete till Rosalind our cook grew tired of our game, grabbed the crab up expertly avoiding the flailing claws and tossed them into the chatty of boiling water.

Negombo wharfside fish market, Sri Lanka

Probably not every Sunday, but often enough for it to be one of my strongest childhood food memories. The crabs and the dizzyingly attractive pungent stench of the market. All produce markets are pleasure gardens to me, but fish markets more so. The pulpy glassy eyes that look horrified and accusatory at the same time; the line of open mouths like so many choristers; the stall holders scale covered hands slashing off hunks of pink/white/red flesh, fanning away the flies, splashing water onto flesh well past resuscitation ; the blues, silvers, reds, browns, spotted, striped, ringed, yellow-finned, spine-finned, whiskered, shelled, pod-footed, segmented, fan-tailed, tentacled, bounty of it all.

The crab would inevitably end up as Sri Lankan crab curry, than which I reckon there is no finer. Hunks of tuna would be washed in lime, coated with ground goroka and emerge from the pan as sour sweet ambul thiyal. Halmassa, dried sprats, would be fried up, mixed with fresh sliced onion and green chilli for a sambol. Swordfish would be the base for a fiery miris malu.

Vendor buying fish from recently arrived angler, Jimbaran

I am no angler so I have a lot of respect for those who are, be they fishing off a breakwater like that which ran out to the lighthouse at the seaward arm of the Colombo Harbour, or the seine net fishermen in Cochin harbour walking the length of the arm of the net to drop it into the bay, or the outrigger boatsmen in the waters of the southern Balinese coast ( I name these because I have direct experience of them as I do not of the North Sea fishers or others off coasts and in oceans I haven't travelled).

Seller, Jimbaran beachside

So, to celebrate those who have brought me so much sensory pleasure over the years here are images from fish markets in Sri Lanka (Colombo, Negombo and village stalls) and Bali (Jimbaran).