A new seafood shop in Finsbury Park

I absolutely love the food shopping in my immediate local area. I almost feel a bit smug at the moment - the TV is packed with famous chefs telling you to support your local businesses, shop local etc etc, and we do about 90% of our food shopping within about 800m of our flat! We do have some brilliant places - Highbury Butchers, Whites Fruit & Vegetables, Da Mario Italian Deli, La Fromagerie cheese shop, Highbury Vintners wine shop, Finsbury Supermarket (which has everything and more that a big supermarket would have except for liquid stock, crumpets and vegemite - so that is pretty much what I buy from Sainsburys). The service is so friendly, they know who we are, it is quick, pleasant, well-priced, plenty of choice and as an added bonus - local. The one thing we were missing was seafood.

But a few weeks ago, a seafood shop opened up on Seven Sisters Road, so the area is now complete. Despite being from Queensland, I've never cooked a huge amount with seafood and am defnitely not confident with whole fish. Most of the fish at this shop is displayed whole and while I'm certain the lovely man there would fillet it for me, I decided it was time to branch out and try a whole fish. He gave us two whole trout for 5 pounds, which I thought was pretty good and I decided to make Pancetta-wrapped trout (although I used the excellent smoked streaky bacon from Highbury Butchers instead of pancetta) served with beans and almonds - pretty classic combination. I think it looked quite impressive, but I do find whole fish difficult to eat and somehow a bit dissatisfying in the end.

Completely satisfying though was the Spicy Prawns with Chickpeas served with flatbread, lime wedges and natural yoghurt. We had also bought a 1 kg bag of frozen raw prawns for 8 pounds, which we divided into three lots. We used the first lot to make this delcious spicy tomato prawn meal, which made enough for dinner for 2 and lunch for me the next day. Pretty good value, I think!

So thanks to the lovely fish man for opening his fish shop - the local shopping here is complete and I'm looking forward to experimenting with more seafood dishes.