The Pirates of the Deep Green Sea is a marvellous book by Eric Linklater. Not a lot of people know that though, so don't worry if you've never heard of it. I never would have known about it if it weren't for my amazing Mum, who has a knack of unearthing some of the best treasures in the book world.
There's nothing else quite like this book. Until you've read it for yourself you won't quite understand, but it IS amazing. It's a tasty concoction of adventure and fantasy with a healthy load of zany quirk thrown in, and a unique brand of imagination.
Mum had a copy of this book that was so well-read she had to laminate it to help it survive its countless readings. One of my first deeds as a nearly grown-up was to catch a bus into Exeter and order my own copy from a bookshop (before internet shopping got so normal). Needless to say, it was not on the shop shelves and I had the delightful anticipation of waiting for it to come into store. This was shortly before I even had an email account and I remember the thrill of being phoned to say the book had arrived.
A brilliant detail of this story is that all the Octopuses have exceedingly long names. To shorten an Octopus' name is quite an affront, unless you know them VERY well, so we all enjoyed the challenge of remembering their absurdly long names. One of the main heroes, and the Octopus with the shortest name, is Culliferdontofoscfoliopolydesteropouf. The others were much longer and I still go over them every now and then to check I still can.
It is often the simplest food within stories that makes us want to eat what the characters are eating. There are many food moments in this book that make you smack your lips. One of them is a mound of sandwiches, eaten on the open sea on a life raft after a ship has sunk, with carefully moderated gulps of lemonade. But one of the more unusual ones is a selection of fishy pastes that are provided in every under-sea 'motel' or "sleeping-shell". Within each of these shells there is a set of bunkbeds and a cupboard containing some whale milk, some rum, and stacks of little wrapped bricks of paste. The usual suspects were Bloater Paste, Shrimp Paste, and Lobster Paste. The cupboards and the sandy carpets are all maintained by Caretaker Crabs who are usually very sleepy and have a reputation for being lazy. Despite the lack of variety and the bare surroundings, something about these little bricks of paste made me peckish every time they were mentioned. I was never one for seafood, but I like the flavour of fish, and have enjoyed fish paste sandwiches in the past. So I thought this was one weird fictional food adventure I had to embark upon.
I tried Shrimp paste first, but found the delicate flavour of the prawns were best left alone. I don't really have the budget to go out buying lobster on a whim, so I researched a bit about Bloaters. I had assumed that a Bloater was a type of fish, but it is actually the name for one way of smoking a herring. A Kipper is a smoked Herring, butterflied out flat. Whereas a Bloater is a smoked Kipper that is gutted but kept whole. So basically both should have a similar smoked herring flavour.
I went and had a chat with the fishy van man who visits Cullompton every week, who told me all this, and also recommended I grill the Kippers. So I came home with a gorgeous, deep ochre Kipper, ready to be turned into those lovely tasty bricks of pate.
If you'd like to see what the recipe entails, here it is:
Kipper Pate (Nearly Bloater Paste).
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