Cooking by the Coast: Keep It Simple

Coastal cooking has a reputation for being fussy. In practice, the opposite is true. If you live near a decent fishmonger, a harbour, or a Saturday market, the best thing you can do with a fresh mackerel or a bag of mussels is very little. The whole point of British coastal produce is that it arrives tasting of the sea already, so the cook's job is mostly to stay out of the way.

What follows are three straightforward dishes built around fish you can buy almost anywhere along the UK coastline. None of them requires a sous-vide, a smoker, or a technique you have to look up twice. They need a sharp knife, a heavy pan, a hot grill, and roughly half an hour. That is the whole kit.

Grilled Mackerel with Lemon and Sea Salt

Mackerel is the most generous fish in British waters and the one most often ruined. It is oily, so it cooks quickly and dries out in seconds if you leave it too long. Buy it gutted and ask for the head off if you prefer, though a whole fish on the plate looks better and keeps the flesh moist.

Take one mackerel per person, up to about 400g each. Pat it dry inside and out with kitchen paper, then make three shallow diagonal slashes through the skin on both sides. Rub with a tablespoon of oil, season generously with flaky sea salt and black pepper, and push a couple of lemon slices and a sprig of thyme into the cavity.

Heat your grill to its highest setting, or get a griddle pan properly smoking. Cook the fish about 10cm from the heat for four to five minutes on each side. Skin side up first gives you crispness; flip once, and once only. The flesh should come away from the bone in clean, glossy flakes. If it is chalky, you have gone two minutes too far.

• Buying: look for bright, unclouded eyes, red gills, and a firm body that springs back.
• Timing: a 350g fish needs roughly nine minutes total. Thicker fish need slightly longer, never more heat.
• Serving: buttered new potatoes, a sharply dressed watercress salad, and extra lemon.

Mussels in Cider and Cream

Mussels have an undeserved reputation for being risky, which is a shame, because they are cheap, sustainable, and cook in the time it takes to lay a table. A kilo serves two comfortably as a main course with bread.

Tip them into a sink of cold water and scrub the shells with a stiff brush. Pull off any beards, the wiry threads that cling to the shell. Discard any that are cracked or that refuse to close when you tap them sharply on the counter. Rinse well and drain.

In a large, deep pan with a tight-fitting lid, soften one finely chopped onion and two cloves of sliced garlic in a good knob of butter. Add 250ml of dry cider and bring it to a rolling boil. Tip in the mussels, clamp on the lid, and steam for four to five minutes, shaking the pan once or twice. They are done the moment the shells open. Any that stay shut go in the bin, not on the plate.

Stir through 100ml of double cream, a handful of chopped parsley, and a squeeze of lemon. Serve straight from the pan with crusty bread and a bowl for the empty shells. If you would rather skip the cream, use a splash more cider and finish with a spoon of crème fraîche instead.

Dressed Crab, Done Properly

A cooked brown crab is one of the great bargains of a coastal kitchen, and dressing one at home takes about twenty minutes once you have done it twice. Ask your fishmonger for a crab weighing around 1kg to 1.5kg for two people, cooked and chilled.

Twist off the legs and claws, crack them with the back of a heavy knife, and pick out the white meat. Turn the crab over, press on the centre of the underside to lever off the tail flap, then pull the body away from the shell. Scoop out the brown meat from the shell and set it aside. Remove the dead man's fingers, the pale grey gills, and the stomach sac, and discard them. Pick the remaining white meat from the body cavities, checking carefully for stray shell.

Season the white meat with a little mayonnaise, lemon juice, and white pepper, keeping it in generous flakes rather than mashing it. Mix the brown meat with a spoonful of breadcrumbs, a teaspoon of English mustard, a pinch of cayenne, and a squeeze of lemon. Pack the brown meat back into the cleaned shell, pile the white meat alongside, and serve with brown bread and butter. A crab prepared this way costs a fraction of a dressed one from a counter, and tastes better for the ten minutes of work.

The Small Things That Matter

Three details lift all of the above from good to excellent. First, season with flaky sea salt rather than table salt, and season fish just before it hits the heat. Second, get your pan or grill properly hot before anything goes near it; lukewarm heat is what makes fish stick and shellfish rubbery. Third, keep a lemon and a bunch of parsley on hand at all times. They are the two ingredients that make coastal cooking taste like itself.

Beyond that, buy fish as close to the water as you can, cook it the day you buy it, and resist the urge to add more than three or four flavours to any one dish. The sea has done most of the work already.