Cracking Crab Party on the Embankment :

It's been a year since I started my campaign to get visitors to South Devon to eat our fabulous crab whilst they are here. It's gone really well and people are enjoying this great seafood more and more. I think the crab down here is the best in the world, Cromer will argue theirs and so will Scotland and so will Cornwall but the fact remains I've tasted them all and South Devon is best, bigger sweeter and the brown meat from one of our large cock crabs is hard to beat.

On August the 7th I've organised with Visit South Devon a street party to celebrate this magnificent crustacea. Up to 500 people will be sitting on the pavement on the embankment in Dartmouth cracking into our local crab and drinking our festival Muscadet, it will be a fantastic day and a real celebration. Come along tickets are £15 and you can get them from Visit South Devon's website. See you there.  

Cooking the books:

I've started the photoshoot for my new book yesterday. It's great seeing all your recipes come to life.  I've done the book on easy recipes , it's just a collection of my favorites that can be done in minutes, ideal for the cook who wants to get a few more recipes in their personal repertoire. Chris Terry the photographer I work with is just a dude, he knows my food and can really bring out the best in it, I love working with him. Today we we're off to the beach to cook but rain has stopped play so a day in the kitchen cooking lobster, squid, mackerel and crab......

Fishy Tales from Wales:

I'm at Pembrokeshire fish week for a few days , it's a great event and seafood is celebrated here for a week. Tomorrow I'll be fishing with Matt Tebbutt, Hixy and Val warner, then it's off to the Torch theatre for a cook up of the catch for the audience, should be a great day. Wales has some great fish, it usually stays local as the nearest big auction markets are on the south coast, I'm sure there would be a great oportunity for the fish here if it could get direct to market, there's some smashing hake, crab, Pembroke prawns, mackerel and lobster , love to get my hands on it....

Let them eat cod:

It would be fair to say that we are pretty obsessed with cod in the UK , it's our fish of choice and always has been. Our total focus turns towards it everytime we want to talk about fish.  It's our benchmark to sustainablity, with the North Sea constantly under scrutiny as if it represents the state of the world's cod stocks and on which we should base our decisions as to what fish we should be eating. I meet a lot of people these days who are genuinely concerned as to whether we should be eating cod at all as we are constantly bombarded with messages about eating other species that are so say in abundance and so say sustainable. I don't think we will ever find an alternative to cod that satisfies the British pallet, it simply isn't there and whilst there are many other species to enjoy (and yes we should be valuing them more) the majority of people in England just won't be able to get hold of it either because of supply or cost.  So should we stop eating cod ? I've headed out to Norway to visit some fishermen who fish tonnes and tonnes of prime cod sustainably - so why don't we know about it? i'll post my opinions over the next few days with some photos and video blog.  Let me know your thoughts, www.twitter.com/mitchtonks