8 double servings of delicious fish for $90.
ll the supplies from the freezer have been eaten, so it's time to do some shopping. Today we went to the Sydney Fish Market. #SydneyFishMarket.
We used to like to stroll around the market, buy ready-made food, and dine on tables by the water. Lately, our behavior tactics have changed. We've already looked at and studied everything, and we know what we need. Arrive when there are few people, quickly buy pre-selected fish, wait for it to be cleaned, filleted, and run away from the market in 20 minutes.
The thing is that parking at the market about 5 years ago was $3 an hour, then they made it $4, then $7, and now it's $12. It seems to me that the market owners are a bit overwhelmed by greed. Or is the administration preparing customers for new prices at the new market, which will open at the end of this year or the beginning of next year?
True, the first 20 minutes of parking are free for now. At first it seemed to us that it was impossible to do anything in 20 minutes. But it is not so. If you know what you want, you can do everything. There are many sellers, they come right away. It takes 7-10 minutes to clean the fish. In the meantime, you can look around and take a photo. Of course, 12 dollars will not ruin the family budget, but if you can avoid paying them, then why pay... It is almost half a kilo of delicious ocean trout, which we have fallen for in recent months.
There are several different companies selling it on the market. We are used to buying from Claudios. It's not that we check which one is better, but it suits us. Everything is compact and has what we need. This time we bought two small ocean trout (2.7 kg) $23 per kilo and two baby barramandi (1.6 kg) at $17 per kilo. Total $90. Parking - 0. We have already seen that while the fish is fresh, it can be rated at 5 plus. When it lies in the freezer for a week, the rating drops to 4, and then even less. We are trying to find ways to preserve the 5-star taste for a little longer. Earlier, we bought a roll of special double film for storing food at Aldi. We have something to seal it with. So, when we got home, we cut the trout fillet into six double portions, plus two barramandi, put everything that wouldn't be eaten today and tomorrow in sealed bags and put it in the freezer. We'll have Thursday and Friday - fish day. For those who didn't live in the USSR in the 70s and 80s, when there was a desperate shortage of meat in the country, all canteens introduced mandatory two fish days, I think Tuesday and Thursday. The fish was pretty tasteless at that time, and what was on sale was mostly "hake and its friends", so these days weren't very exciting. However, there were some surprises - I went on a business trip with my colleagues to the city of Guryev on the Caspian Sea. Now it's part of Kazakhstan, and it's called something else, but in those old days it was the remains of a once prosperous fishing town, with solid two-story wooden log houses a hundred years old or more. By the time we arrived, some of these houses still had old signs like "Anchor Partnership", but the leaky parts of the houses were filled with really base plywood from mailboxes or boards from pallets. It was obvious that the old owners had long since left, and the new settlers were not used to wealth and were looking after the houses as best they could...
But let's get back to the fish day. When we went into the city canteen, hungry, we were greeted by a sign - today is fish day. A little upset, we sat down and began to wait for the ordered fish soup. When we saw solid pieces of sturgeon in large plates, our mood changed radically. In short, we came to this canteen again the next day, but the expected sign was no longer there. Well, the meat there was, as everywhere in the country at that time, that is, no... To summarize our trip to the fish market, for 90 dollars we bought 8 double portions of delicious fish. And also heads, bones, tails and fish trimmings for soup! Not bad at all in our times. Now you can arrange a fish day at least every other day for two weeks, considering that the meat has already been bought...
Vladimir KOUZMIN
