Fishing with
Michel Roux
Ella Walker joins the celebrity chef on a trip to Tromso, to better understand the Scandinavian delicacy.
WRITTEN BY ELLA WALKER I
t’s rather extraordinary to be 300km north of the Arctic Circle, in the land of the
Northern Lights, eating fresh cod - so fresh it was still swimming the fords a couple of hours ago - with two-Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Jr. But this isn’t just any old cod (and it’s certainly not battered). Roux is a Norway Seafood Council skrei ambassador, and we’re in Tromsø for skrei cod season. Te fish are muscular, hulking things, with red rimmed eyes and scales the colour of razor clam shells - and they’re a national delicacy.
FISHING FOR A SKREI SUPPER INVOLVES PATIENCE AND THERMALS Roux visits Tromsø for skrei season
year aſter year, but promises: “It doesn’t lose any of the magic.” Out on the fords surrounding Sommarøy Island, an hour north of Tromsø airport, and squeezed into thickly padded onesies to ward off
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great sprays of seawater and the freezing temperatures (it’s minus eight-degrees), you can see his point. We’re flanked by ragged, snow-dusted mountains, the sun barely cresting their summits. Our Sommarøy Cruises crew explain how the blackly swirling waters are invisibly divided up. Each fisherman has their own patch - the higher up the fishery food chain, the better your spot, and the newer you are to the skrei game, the further out your slot. Captain Ketil Voll instructs us to reel our lines out - no bait needed - until we can feel the weight hit the sea bed, and then swoop our rods back and forth in big, arcing motions (“You have to work to get the cod’s attention”). My first catch is a silvery slip of a thing - and sadly not a skrei (“Cat food,” announces one of the crew), but my next two are; heavy on the line and wrestling powerfully until hoisted over the edge.
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