Great Britain: In 2002, the BBC posed the question ‘What comes to mind when you think of Britain’. This was prompted by a new tourism campaign that focused on British eccentricity as being attractive to overseas visitors. The images chosen to headline the campaign included knights in armour playing tennis and Wellington boot throwing contests.
Twenty or more years later, the Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) think that football and fish and chips are the first things that come to mind when talking about Great Britain. This is not surprising given that they head up the fish and chip shop of the year competition and have partnered with Erling Braut Haaland, who apparently is a football player with some minor UK football club.
Intrafish have published a commentary from the NSC about the opportunities for Norwegian seafood in the UK market especially as according to Statistics Norway, the UK is Norway’s most important country for exports with salmon, cod and haddock.
However, as the NSC rightly say, in recent years seafood consumption has fallen in the UK because of rising prices, and not just of fish. Yet in 2024, they say demand has stabilised particularly for the so-called prepared products, which they say is the biggest category in British grocery. How much of this large category is made up of fish and seafood is unclear. I wrote earlier this year that demand for chilled fish has stabilised after the pandemic peak but whether this can be sustained remains to be seen. Britons still only eat the equivalent of one portion of fish a week, something that has not changed for years. Certainly, there does not seem any inclination by the British public to eat any more.
The NSC think that an increasing proportion of the UK population are relatively well off and therefore have money to spend on fish and seafood, especially the broad portfolio of Norwegian seafood that is on offer. They add that Norwegian seafood is in a unique position to serve and meet consumer needs across social strata and wallets. Thus, from high end and luxury markets as illustrated by the density of influential Michelin restaurants to simple healthy everyday foods such as the classic fish and chips. Yet, whilst Michelin star restaurants are not uncommon especially in southern England, their menus tend to shy away from the more common place species. One such restaurant (One Star) that I visited recently served pollock as its fish offering. The Elephant in Torquay (also One Star) currently has stone bass on its menus. Its chef proprietor Simon Hulstone was once, and maybe still is, an ambassador for the NSC and featured in their 2022 promotional campaign in Letchworth Garden City. One of the images provided by the NSC and used to illustrate their commentary appears to include Simon demonstrating Norwegian fish to young chefs. Fish and chips remain popular in the UK, but the sector has been hit by high raw material and energy prices and face stiff competition from a whole host of take away food options.
Another image in the Intrafish commentary illustrates the NSC’s UK campaign for Norwegian cod and haddock this autumn. The image shows a promotional flyer that is attached vertically to four shelves of the chilled fish section and is headed Explore Norwegian Cod.
As it happens, I have a photo of the same campaign flyer taken in my local Sainsbury’s store.
In addition to the flyer, a tear off recipe card was attached to one of the shelves. This was for Norwegian cod with red peppers and tomatoes with the recommendation to use a pack of ‘Taste the Difference’ skinless and boneless chucky cod fillets, although at the time observed, the pack of cod was at its regular priced. It was only after the promotional material was taken away, that the 260g TTD cod loin went on promotion with a saving of 50p down to £5.00.
Long term readers of reLAKSation may remember that before I became distracted by wild salmon interactions, I often undertook a taste test of new products or promoted recipes. This seemed an ideal opportunity to delve into the world of recipes again. The recipe can be seen below over both sides of the recipe card.
The assembled ingredients
And the finished dish.
And the opinion. This is a dish of two halves. The tomato and pepper mix was quite tasty for a midweek meal but the fish, which as can be seen from the recipe as being baked on top of the mix was relatively bland as cod can be. The fish seemed totally separate from the tomato and pepper mix. If I was promoting cod, I would rather see a recipe that incorporated the fish into the flavour profile of the whole dish. In addition, as the fish was sold under the premium label, it was rather watery. The pack label states that the fish had bene previously frozen and defrosted without affecting the quality or safety of the product. I am not so sure.
Earlier in September Asda also had cod on promotion with the 260g pack of cod loin selling for £4.65 saving 55p and a 260g pack of cod fillets selling at £4.15 saving 75p but priced after the promotion at £5.00. A week later I visited an Asda store and found three packs of tear off recipe cards at the bottom of the chiller cabinet.
The recipe was for baked Norwegian cod and cherry tomato orzo as can be seen from the two sides of the recipe card below
Like the Sainsburys recipe, the fish is baked on top of the other ingredients, and I suspect that this dish too will be a recipe of two halves.
Over the year’s I have witnessed many promotions in both UK and French stores, and I can say that they very rarely look like the promotional images taken of the launch of the campaign for distribution with press releases, such as the one highlighted in Salmon Business in South Korea using Erling Haaland. I often get the feel that the importance of the campaigns is to demonstrate to their fee-payers that that such campaigns are underway rather than any actual success. The reality is that I suspect sales of cod loin only increased once the pack was discounted rather than by the availability of a recipe card.
Returning to the NSC commentary, they say that consumers are concerned about the seafood they eat with the British consumers saying that ‘certified sustainably produced’ is among the most important reasons why they choose Norwegian salmon. I suspect that these consumers are asked if buying certified sustainably produced’ fish is important to them to which they will say yes. If the idea of buying ‘sustainably produced fish’ was not put to them, they would not volunteer any such interest. My experience suggests that most consumers buying salmon simply buy what their retailer has on offer, irrespective of whether it is Norwegian or Scottish. As I have written many times before the reason why Norwegian salmon has a strong position in the UK market is that local producers simply are unable produce enough to satisfy demand and hence Norwegian salmon fills the shortfall.
This choice between primarily Norwegian and Scottish salmon in UK retail (Icelandic and Faeroese salmon can be found too) highlights a major issue for the NSC. The reality is that whilst their main aim is to promote the Norwegian origin of their fish and seafood, most UK consumers have no interest in the origin of their fish and seafood at all. Whilst Sainsburys’ have promoted a recipe using Norwegian cod, the pack of fish states ‘Cod caught using hooks and lines in the Northeast Atlantic (Norwegian Sea, Spitzbergen and Bear Island, Barents Sea or Iceland Grounds).
Norway: Another recent commentary from Intrafish asks when did Norway stop eating fish? The author Hanna Bakke-Jensen says that she eats much less fish now than when she was growing up. She ate fish at her grandmothers house several times a week, now she says she probably only eats fish five-times a month. She asks when did Norwegians like her stop eating fish and how can this trend be reversed.
She says that price is often highlighted as the main reason as fish and seafood is quite expensive and certainly when VAT was cut in 2023 sales increased by 25%. Asides from price, Hanna also thinks that many people are afraid to cook fish because they think it is more difficult than it actually is. At the same time, seafood is losing out to other food choices especially as food is becoming more internationalised with Italian, Indian and Chinese food now readily available.
She asks what the solution is and she thinks the boring answer is that much of the work lies in changing attitudes and knowledge of fish and seafood and that the seafood industry needs to be better at promoting itself.
My own view is that Norway is no different to the UK and some other European countries. The sector simply needs to be more focused on producing what the consumer wants and more importantly that it is available using the channels that consumers use.
All too often we see images of the sector holding up examples of whole fish and expect consumers to get excited at the prospect of putting it on their table when the reality is that they cannot relate that fish to the food they actually want to eat.
White as snow: Fish Farmer magazine reports that Norwegian farmed cod may be repositioned as ‘white salmon’ if Norcod’s marketing experiment takes off. I don’t know how long Norcod, one of Norway’s largest producers of farmed cod, is planning to run their marketing experiment but if the intention is to suggest that their farmed cod is portrayed as ‘white salmon’ then the experiment is doomed to fail. Cod producers cannot describe cod as salmon, irrespective of whether it is white, pink or even purple. There are rules about how fish can be labelled and saying that they want to reposition cod as salmon is just not possible, regardless of how much money Norcod want to throw at this market strategy.
What I think Norcod intended to say is that their farmed cod is the new salmon in that it is a farmed fish that can be produced to exacting standards, at times when the market wants and at a price, they hope the market will pay with a quality they believe to be superior.
Whilst salmon anglers will tell you that there is a world of difference between a wild salmon and a farmed one, their perception is not always reflected at the table. The same can be said for cod. It is unlikely that most consumers will be able to tell a piece of farmed cod from one caught at sea, even if that fish is frozen at sea.
At the same time branding cod may be a costly experiment, except if the fish can be sold into higher end restaurants but in the retail sector such branding will be an uphill battle. It is extremely difficult to brand a piece of raw fish and expect consumers to pay more for it. I appreciate that there is at least one company branding their raw fish in retail, but I have yet to be convinced that it is paying its way.
NorCod is optimistic about the future of its branded cod but then it would be surprising if the company said otherwise.
Dry Aged: One of our local pubs is something of a foodie destination and as part of the local fringe festival it hosted a guest night with food cooked by Michelin stared chef Lee Westcott. He prepared a three-course set menu with a starter that he described as ‘Dry aged rainbow trout, Isle of White tomatoes, sorrel and watercress.’ Apparently, the dish was such a success that the pub is to include a version on its regular menu. It certainly was delicious, but the question is whether dry ageing anything to do with the taste?
Dry aging beef is common practice amongst top end butchers. The meat is held in an open-air environment where it undergoes a flavour transformation. By exposing the meat to air moisture is pulled out and the natural enzymes in the meat break down the muscles overtime making it more tender.
But does this work for fish too. Certainly, there are references to dry aging fish on the internet but not in terms of creating a dish for public consumption.
I passed a message to Lee asking him for his explanation and his reply was:
The reason I dry age fish is similar to why people dry age meat. It takes out any unnecessary moisture to give a more concentrated flavour of the product you are ageing.
By cleaning the ‘insides/guts’ off the fish and cleaning it well, you also prolong the life of the fish which enables you to be able to achieve the dry ageing technique.
Does it really make a difference or is another chefy attempt to make a point of difference. It was tasty but I think that if there was any enhancement in the taste, it might have come from the way it was cooked. I imagine that the only way to tell if dry aging will become a fish thing is if it is possible to taste two identical dishes side by side of one, which is dry aged and the other not.