FOOD & DRINK / The North Sea's silver harvest: Eight master chefs in search of salmon fit for an earl travelled to Shetland. Michael Bateman reports

THE MASTER chefs of Great Britain are bound for the Shetland Islands to exer-

cise their palates. Do they know something we don't?

In several thousand years of history these most northerly of British islands (on a latitude with Oslo, Stockholm and St Petersburg) have never been renowned for gastronomy. Can you honestly say you've heard of swats (a drink made with grain husks) and soins (the husks made into a pudding)? Would you even consider eating tartanpurry, porridge made with cabbage water?

The unfamiliar diet of these islands, logged in James R Nicolson's Traditional Life in Shetland, makes alarming reading. Nicolson describes the Shetlander's relish for fish livers, the prized ingredient of many favoured dishes: muggies and mooguilden, stap and slot, krampies and krappin. Lamb dishes include muckle bag, made from the sheep's entrails, and sparls, scraps of meat, gristle and fat, wrapped in the large intestine and hung to dry for four weeks over peat smoke.

About the only delicacy not on Mr Nicolson's roll-call is salmon. Shetlanders may not yet eat much of it, but they produce a quarter of Britain's farmed salmon - more than 11,000 tons a year.

It is the salmon that has brought the chefs, eight members of the 92-strong Master Chefs of Great Britain, to the islands. Since their last visit a lot of extremely filthy water has passed around Sumburgh Head, where the Braer oil tanker shot its cargo into the sea close to the most south-westerly of the salmon cages, ruining the reputation of this farmed fish.

Yet, within two weeks, the ferocious winter weather (Shetland claims a record gust of wind of 177mph in 1962) had smashed the Braer to pieces and dispersed the oil slick into the distant ocean. The entire stock of many salmon farms was duly destroyed, and the breeding cycle started again from scratch. The salmon has now won a clean bill of health.

The visiting chefs are led by their president, the Earl of Bradford. With his neat grey beard he faintly resembles George V but is actually an active restaurateur. He owns Porters in Covent Garden (dubbed 'a peer among restaurants') and runs Weston Park in Shropshire. His colleagues have taken time off from restaurants as far afield as Ludlow, Southsea, Storrington, Bath, Witherslack and Winteringham. All are converts to farmed salmon, if it is good, though all agree that nothing compares with wild salmon - when it is in perfect condition. 'The problem is,' says the Earl, 'that you can't get consistency with wild salmon. Farmed salmon from a good producer is consistent.'

Even without the Braer disaster these are lean times for salmon farmers. When many of them went into the business salmon fetched pounds 3.50 a pound; now it's more like pounds 1.50 or even pounds 1 a pound. This - good news for the consumer - is because of competition from Norway, which produces four times as much as the whole of Scotland. But, unfortunately, the product seems to have been getting worse. Is it possible that salmon is going the way of the battery chicken? The chefs have strong feelings about what badly-farmed salmon is: flabby, fatty, limp, lifeless and a poor colour. Why should this be?

Research scientists at the North Atlantic Fishing College, in Scalloway, the Shetlands' second town, think they may have the answer. 'The fish-feed companies,' says Artie Nicolson, who is in charge of quality control, 'are pushing high-energy feed for fast growth. Farmers like that because they get a better conversion rate for the feeds. But the feed used to contain 17 to 20 per cent oil; now it's more like 30 per cent. We think this produces a fatty, flabby fish.'

The high point of the chefs' trip was an outing to see the fish. They had heard about some of the overcrowded cages positioned in shallow lochs on the west coast of Scotland which give the industry a bad name. There, the fish are treated with chemicals to guard against the diseases that caged fish are prone to, infestations of sea lice, and dense droppings which pollute the loch bed.

Our party was boarded on to something like a landing craft and, in a spatter of rain, headed out into the grey North Sea to inspect a farm in the deep water of Yell Sound, between the north and south islands. Thirty cages, each 10 metres deep, are moored in 60 metres of water. Each cage contains 10,000 fish and they cut the surface with silver flashes every time a central hose jets out feed pellets into the water.

The farmer, Gilbert Johnson, makes up feed pellets to his own specification, with fish meal and fish oil imported from Norway. It's more expensive than feed bought from feed companies, he says, but it produces better quality fish. A sacrificial salmon is netted, stunned and beheaded for the chefs. Colin White, chef of Woolley Grange, Bradford-on-Avon, scrutinises the specimen appreciatively. 'What beautiful gills.'

The next day it was delicately poached to form the centrepiece of a fine lunch cooked by catering students at Lerwick's Further Education College, a captivating table of local lobsters, crabs, prawns, oysters, mussels, pickled herrings and Shetland lamb. The chefs were hugely impressed and called the students in for a round of applause. The Earl of Bradford asked where they obtained the most agreeable Sancerre which perfectly matched the salmon. 'From the Co-op,' they said. 'Is it good?'

Returning to the airport, the party was taken by way of the white-painted lighthouse at Sumburgh Head, the southernmost tip of this 70-mile-long group of about 100 islands. The murderous seas which brought the Braer to its watery end have since scrubbed the shores as clean as they ever were. The lighthouse stands white against a Mediterranean blue sky, but the zero-degree wind-chill factor is a reminder that the Arctic Circle is closer than Capri.

Herring gulls wheel overhead and a pair of eagle-eyed oystercatchers scan the waves for prey. A few hundred feet below, in the boiling white clean sea, three seals are diving for fish. What oil spill?

THE SALMON FILE

GOOD salmon should not be submitted to complicated cooking processes. The essential thing is not to overcook it, because even the best hardens to an uncompromising toughness in the twinkling of an eye. This doesn't necessarily mean the short, sharp shock of a very hot pan where timing must be to the fraction of a second. Here are basic ways our chefs prefer.

POACHING (to serve warm with a hot buttery sauce or lemony hollandaise, or cold with mayonnaise). This is the method used by Simon Traynor, chef of the Park Lane Hotel; it produces flesh which is moist, melting and very tender.

Make a poaching liquor, a court-bouillon, to half fill a fish kettle or amply sized cooking pot, by simmering water, a glass of white wine, a tablespoonful of white vinegar, a chopped onion, half a leek, a chopped stalk of celery, a quarter head of fennel, a chopped carrot, a bay leaf and half a dozen black peppercorns. Simmer for 30 minutes and leave to cool. This can be prepared in advance.

Put the salmon into the cold court-bouillon and bring to just below the boil - bubbles barely breaking the surface - and simmer for five minutes. Turn off the heat and leave the fish in the water to cool. Skin it, lay on a serving dish and decorate with sliced cucumber, wedges of lemon and parsley.

GRIDDLED: A favourite of Tony Howorth, chef at Cafe du Jardin in Covent Garden. Get a ridged grill pan very hot (it doesn't work under the grill). Cut 6oz/175g slices of salmon from the fish on the bias, against the grain. Brush with olive oil, cook each slice 15 seconds, remove and replace at an angle 90 degrees to get a squared effect (quadrillage). Turn over with a fish slice and repeat, griddling for 10 seconds only. Remove the salmon to a warm place to sit for 10 minutes before serving, perhaps on a bed of buttered, sauteed fresh leaf spinach.

MARINATED: Another of Tony Howorth's recipes. It's an instant marinade, only a whisker away from being sashimi of raw salmon.

After removing bones and skin, cut salmon across the grain into thinnest strips possible. Place three or four strips on each plate, sprinkle with grey sea salt and lime juice. Serve with a julienne of cucumber, radiccio and finely sliced avocado.

SALMON FISH CAKES

This is a signature dish of Colin White, chef at Woolley Grange in Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts.

Makes 4 small fishcakes

8oz/225g salmon fillets, lightly cooked and flaked

1 medium large potato, lightly baked

(still a little hard in the middle)

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger

1-2 hot green chillies, seeds removed and finely sliced

2-3 limes

2-3 tablespoons chopped coriander leaf

salt to taste

vegetable oil and butter for frying

Peel the potato and grate coarsely. Drain any moisture from the salmon and mix together with the potato, ginger, chillies and coriander. Season to taste with lime juice and salt. Form into cakes using floured hands and a palette knife. Refrigerate to firm up. Fry in oil and butter on both sides. Serve with rocket salad and coriander salsa (see below).

For coriander salsa: Mix together a large bunch of chopped coriander, a small bunch of chopped spring onions, two medium hot green chillies, deseeded and chopped, four tablespoons lime juice, and four tablespoons of olive oil. Allow to mature for several hours.

(Photograph omitted)