You probably think there's no such thing as a vegetarian fisherman. But I know there is and I know because I was one for a short time. Here's the story....
I lived in Saudi Arabia for a few years once and I had a room in an apartment building right next to the sea. I walked out the door in the morning and there was the beach right in front. It was a beautiful white sandy beach with turquoise water in a sheltered bay. If it had been Egypt, a holiday resort would have sprung up and people would have flown from all over the world to spend time there, lazing about on the beach. But it wasn't Egypt, though most of the guys I shared the block with were Egyptians. I spent a lot of time on the beach, wandering up and down, looking for shells and any interesting flotsam and jetsam that got washed up. I found a few cans of beer one time and buried them in the sand at the top of the beach. Mahmoud told me they were from smuggling boats which had been intercepted by the coast guard. The smugglers would chuck the stuff in the sea rather than get caught with contraband. Another time after a storm, thousands of apples, oranges, lemons, pomegranates and persimmons got washed up. They left beautiful lines of colour all along the contours of the beach for miles in either direction. The coastguard arrived and chased us off the beach when we went to explore. Most of the fruit was ruined by the salt anyway. They were always bullying us, the coastguard. That's why I became a vegetarian fisherman.
I had been birding on the beach and got caught a few times and taken down the station. My friend Niyazi who, although rather short physically, was a big man figuratively in the local community. He got me out, but after the third time he said, 'There ain't gonna be a fourth, Ashy. Next time your on your own.' So I gave that up and just beach-combed after that. But the coastguard turned up, made me empty my pockets and show them what was in the bag. They checked my residence card on the radio and generally gave me a hard time. On one occasion a guy pointed a machine gun at me and I got really pissed off, but there wasn't much I could do about that. I noticed that my Egyptian friends never once got hassled on the beach, and it wasn't because they were Egyptian. It was because they were fishing. The coastguard understood that. Hassling animals was normal, picking up shells was subversive.
I went to Mahmoud's room and borrowed a fishing rod, reel, line and that kind of stuff. I got a a deck chair, too. Mahmoud also gave me some little weights to tie on, but when he offered me different sizes of hooks, I didn't take any. I took all my kit down to the beach, tied one of the weights on to the line and chucked it out into the bay. I stuck the handle of the rod into the sand and sat back in the deck chair, adjusted my hat and enjoyed the beach without any hassle. That became a habit. Every evening I'd do a spot of fishing and at the weekend I'd take sometimes take a bottle of pepsi with some flash mixed in it and get quietly juiced as the sun went down. On a couple of occasions I even managed to enjoy a wee joint I got from my Bedouin buddies.
So, there you are. The story of the vegetarian fisherman. And here's the recipe for vegetarian fisherman's salad.....
Ingredients
A small tin of cooked, chopped seaweed (about 150g)
1 small onion
1 carrot
A handful of black olives
A couple of dried red chillies
A teaspoon of lemon juice
2 teaspoons of oil
A cup of yoghurt
Either grate the carrot or, as I prefer doing, slice it very thinly along the length and then cut the slices into very thin strips. This takes a little time but I think the improvement in the final texture of the dish is worth it. SLice up the onion finely, chop the olives and mix all the cut-up vegetables with the seaweed.
Make a dressing by mixing the oil and lemon juice into the yoghurt with the crushed chillies and just a pinch of salt (not too much as the seaweed and olives are quite salty). Mix the dressing into the salad.
Vegetarian fisherman's salad is delicious served with boiled new potatoes (and a joint and a glass of flash if you're that way inclined).
more salad recipes