As Hylda Baker would have said. At a local fish and music festival while wandering around the various stalls I noticed a bowl of mussels sat in water , there was a health mark alongside the bowl of mussels with the relevant information as to the source and date. I asked one of the cooks why the mussels were sat in a bowl of mussels, and he replied it was to purge them.?? I pointed out they had been through a depuration process of a minimum of 42 hours in a tank which had been tested by the CEFAS authority from Weymouth as being suitable to depurate mussels . The cook said it was also because someone may have handled them? It was obvious the conversation was not going to achieve anything so I told him I was going to take a picture of the bowl of mussels sat in water. The mussels will know they are in fresh water (as Hylda Baker would have said “They know you know”) They will not open in water which is less than 12 parts per thousand of salt, and from our experience they like to be in salt water with a salinity of 42 parts per thousand salt to water. The whole point of the CEFAS approved tanks is to ensure that shellfish which go through the depuration process are fit for human consumption. Putting mussels in a bowl of water will render the health mark which accompanies all shellfish Invalid.

After a long consutation process we have at last obtained the consent to expand the farm site which when it is on stream , will aleviate the periods when we run out of mussels . Demand has been steadily increasing and we do run out of Brixham mussels at times, and have to wait for more mussels to grow to a marketable size . The two lads on the mussel harvester have been puting out ropes which have been seeded , and they report that the barrels which keep the longlines up are gradually sinking as the mussel seed grows . The rate of growth will ease of during the winter months and pick up again in the spring . To harvest the increased mussel load we have applied for an EU grant towards an Aquaculture Service Vessel which has been approved and we are .currently looking at two vessels which will meet the criteria .

bysuss thread

We had feed back from one of the merchants who supply the London restaurants .
One of his customers was unhappy because he/they had,had to take off the bysuss thread which the mussels use, to attach themselves to what ever they are growing on.
If you pull out the bysuss which is attached to the mussel internally, you will shorten the mussels life and it will DIE.
The bysuss threads should be removed shortly before they are going to be cooked .
If the removal of the bysuss threads are becoming time consuming ,a Dutch company called Franken BV, manufacture a debysying machine which has contra rotating rollers which have a thread on the roller which will take the hairs off the mussels.
The machines are available in various sizes to suit the different sized restaurants.
Visit the web site www.brixhamseafarmsltd.co.uk where there is a section on looking after your shellfish and the subject of bysuss threads is covered

Is Dave running scared of the Quango Queens

This headline, in the Saturday 30th October Daily Mail caught my eye
and so I read on.
Quentin Letts column.
Quango Queen 2. Helen Phillips is the £144,000 a year head of Natural
England.
A Tory MP, Ian Liddell-Grainger this week had a terrific go at the environmental quango calling it a “Stalinist organisation” which uses
‘Scare tactics’ against farmers.
Mr Liddell-Grainger accused its acolytes of wearing open- toed sandals and overdue haircuts, but their ‘loony bunny-hugger’ leader was prone
To ‘elegant stiletto- heeled boots’.
Another MP pointed out that Natural England’s staff costs for this year
are £96.5 million?
The Government’s reaction? Farming Minister James Paice meekly said
he would not axe Natural England.

It is gratifying to find that other people think along the same lines regarding Natural England.
Mr Liddell-Grainger could have included brown rice when he commented on the open- toed sandals.
Did I miss something; I was under the impression that Dave was going to sort out the Quangos if he got in? . It looks like yet another empty promise.

Lifting out at Baltic Wharf

On the Friday a crane and lowloader had arrived at Baltic Wharf to
lift out and transport JJ to Lowestoft
These are some pictures of the lift and fitting JJ onto the lowloader

Jose alongside at Totnes , and Jose leaving Galmpton at 7 am for totnes

Tigres Mussels

We had a couple of vistors to the depuration center and I explained how the systems worked and gave a quick biology lesson on the birds and bees relative to moules
reproduction .The ladies are orange and the males white.!
The conversation got around
to how to cook mussels and I intended to explain how to cook Tigres mussels but had a senior moment when the brain went blank and I could not recall the name Tigres .
The brain has now rebooted and as you can see from the heading to this blog I was trying to recall Tigres Mussels .
Rather than typing in one of the recipes, I recommend you Google, Tigres Mussels.
You will then find the regional variations on preparing this dish.
Bilbao , Madrid , San Sebastion there are variation on a common theme and once you have tried say the Bilbao version you will start to experiment with your own version.
I tried a version of my own on the general public at last years Taste of the West show
which had a black pudding and apple sauce base, a mussel on the base, and a Calvados and creme fraiche topping. They went down very well .
One of the sayings about Tigres Mussels is that you wont find any lurking in the fridge.
Adding some hot chilli either fresh or chilli flakes to the mixture gives them the fire which is where the name Tigres comes from