Looking to entertain at home this Valentine's Day...
then pre-order now for last delivery on the
12th February 2010
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See the last traditional fishery working under sail and try all the River Fal Seafood at:
A 3 day Authentic
Oyster Gathering & Cornish Seafood Market
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Check out Slow Food UK Presidium Suppliers list at:
http://www.slowfoodark.com/Cms/Page/south-west#5
Cornish Native Oysters or 'Fal Oysters' are thought to have been found since the earliest trading with the Phoenicians, and were widely grown around the coast when the Romans occupied Britain. For hundreds of years they were seen as a food for the poor who would gather the plankton-feeding bivalves from the muddy banks of creeks and rivers at low tide. In 1298 they sold for 2d (less than 1p) a gallon and were cheap in comparison with other fish.
By the time Sir Richard Carew published the Survey of Cornwall in 1602, oysters were being caught using dredges “a thick strong net fastened to three spills of iron, and drawn to the boat’s stern, gathering whatsoever it meeteth lying in the bottom of the water, out of which, when it is taken up, they cull the oyster and cast away the residue, which they term gard, and serveth as a bed for the oysters to breed in.” In Carew’s time oysters were abundant around the Cornish shoreline, now they are only found in the Fal, Percuil, Helford, Fowey and Camel rivers; the Fal has the last wild oyster beds, in the other rivers both native and Pacific oysters are re-laid and farmed. The Cornish Native Oysters are slow maturing, taking up to five years to grow to a marketable size, and is thought to have a far superior flavour to the faster growing Pacific oysters (crassostrea gigas also sometimes known as rock oysters).
http://www.england-in-particular.info/goods/g-case4-04.html