From Saint Peter’s fingerprints to the main meal of Good Friday, fish is closely linked to the Easter holiday. Enjoy this brief history and browse superb seafood recipes from the Kitchens of our Good Food Ireland® Chefs. At Easter, the typical foods of the holiday are as much about symbolism as they are about tradition. In most Irish households’ fish features hugely at Easter, usually as the main meal on Good Friday. There are several reasons why fish is an important part of this particular church holiday.   Fish is a holy food! According to the Bible, fresh fish has close links to the story of Christ’s life. 1. Fish was reported to have been used by Christ to encourage Peter to join him as an apostle. Gospels report the story of Jesus instructing Peter to row out and cast his nets on the water. The fisherman was reluctant to do so, saying that he had already been out all night and caught nothing. Nevertheless, he did as he was told, taking his boat out again and lowering his nets exactly where Jesus had shown him. This time around, he caught such a haul his little boat could hardly bear the weight. Jesus is said to have chastised Peter in a gentle way for doubting him, saying ‘Follow me and soon you will be a Fisher of Men.” 2. The feeding of the five thousand is said to have been carried out by Jesus with just five loaves, two fish and a very big miracle. 3. John Dory is also known as St Peter’s Fish, because of its connection to the aforementioned Peter, who became the first of Christ’s apostles, and is now Patron Saint of Fishermen. The distinctive round black marks on either side of the body of John Dory are said to have been created by Peter when he accidentally dropped a coin into the water whilst out fishing on the Sea of Galilee. The coin was caught in the mouth of a passing fish. Peter reached in to catch the fish with his bare hand, leaving his fingerprints on the skin of the creature as he held it firm to retrieve the coin from its mouth. If you’re having fish on Good Friday, what could be more appropriate than the very fish that is said to have been touched by a Saint!   Why do we eat fish on Good Friday? The custom of eating fish on Good Friday comes directly from the days of strict observance of fasting and abstinence in the Catholic Faith. Church rules dictated that no meat should be eaten on Fridays throughout the year, and on certain holy days. Fish soon became the Friday meal in most Catholic homes, a tradition that continues to this day. In the mid-1960s, Pope Paul VI reformed many of these strict rules. In line with more modern thinking, the Pope reduced the number of fasting days in the year. However, Good Friday, observed as the day Christ was crucified, remained a strictly religious holy day with only one small meat-free meal allowed. Fish was eaten instead. Today most Irish households enjoy fish on Good Friday, but the occasion of the meal is more often a convivial family affair than a strict penitential duty.   Cook Your Own Good Friday Fish Dish Our Good Food Ireland® Chefs work miracles of their own kind when it comes to fish! Have a quick scan through our fish recipes, and see if there’s something that takes your fancy for this Good Friday. View Recipes   Happy Easter!  

“He was a bold Man, that first ate an Oyster,” wrote Jonathan Swift in 1738, but Irish people have been slurping these silky molluscs for thousands of years before Swift’s quip.   The first settlers to Ireland found an abundance of food in the fields, rivers and seas. Oyster shell middens dating from prehistoric times have been found around the coast of Ireland showing that oysters were an abundant food in the Irish diet and oyster cultivation in Ireland dates all the way back to the 13th-century. This Irish indigenous ingredient has a really rich history and one of the people telling this food story and protecting its heritage is Hugh O’Malley of Achill Oysters.   “I am the first one in our family to have oysters. We were fishermen. Five generations before me were harvesting from the sea around Achill. I am merely carrying on from what was done before,” says Hugh. Whilst around the world there is a growing interest in local produce, food history and regional cuisine, growing up in Achill with all the spoils of the seas, Hugh felt a little put upon.   “Dad had a trawler and the fish would be brought home and I was feeling very put upon living on wild salmon and wild lobsters, while everyone else was having Pop-Tarts and Findus Crispy Pancakes. I felt very much like a second class citizen because we had to eat lobster, again   Much in the way that Frankie Mallon and Myles O’Brien approach the handling of their ingredients, Hugh remembers that the food would be cooked “really simply. The salmon would be boiled, and the same with the lobster. It would be very, very simple. A butter sauce because butter was in the house and spuds from the garden”.   Keeping things simple and not doing much to the raw ingredients is also the best way to treat his oysters. “It is so nice to hear the likes of Alan Woods extolling the virtues of the oysters and how clean and fresh they are and how they don’t need anything extra”. Eating the oysters au naturel is one of the best ways to truly experience the taste of Achill. Much like wine, and the Achill Mountain lamb, oysters get a distinctive character from their environment.   “The reason that our oysters are unique is that it is foggy-boggy. It’s the peat bogs that surround the beach, and actually, the submerged bogs that are underneath the beach, that gives a really peaty taste. In the height of the rains, the entire bay will turn a tea colour with the amount of peat that’s being swept down off the mountains. We get lots of rain and lots of lovely freshwater. So even though the Atlantic is very salty and there’s a briny taste to the oysters, they are flushed through with an inordinate amount of freshwater. So the Atlantic around us would be quite saline, but the bay where we are, there’s so much fresh water being pumped in and there are hills all the way around it and its a little bowl and it does tend to make them unique, a truly unique taste”.   Hugh has been farming oysters in Achill now for over a decade and, like many businesses in the region, including Kelly’s Butchers, Hugh likes to keep things local.   “We employ four households 52 weeks of the year in Achill. We employ many casual workers during the summer and during holiday periods. We support local businesses. If we can source something on the island with local businesses, we source it on the island. If you can support your local businesses, they will tend to support you. It creates a virtuous cycle”.   The benefits of supporting local food producers for the customers are also plenty.   “It reduces the miles that each piece of the plate makes. The less the food has traveled, the better it tastes. There’s nothing better than sitting on a veranda having your oysters and looking out at the bays beneath you with the oysters there in the bay. We sell a lot of oysters around Achill simply because of that connection. It’s good for the environment, too. So there’s the virtue of being virtuous. The taste is better. If you can open an oyster on the beach and taste it, it’s never going to be better than that. The oyster isn’t stressed, it hasn’t traveled. It just has taste, taste, taste”.   You can enjoy that taste, taste, taste year-round too.   “We’ve got different types of oysters for the different times of the year so that 52 weeks of the year we can bring a proper product to the market. The oysters that we have ready for this time of year will have milk in them during the summer. They are referred to as being milky. They are the oysters that would have been traditionally grown around Ireland, and why you don’t eat oysters if there is not an ‘r’ in the month. Those oysters need cold weather to be told to bring the milk back into the oyster and turn it into fat. That’s where you get the really creamy marbled oyster. Full and fat this time of year”.   So, much like ourselves, oysters gain a little extra weight (although I prefer to call it ‘insulation’) in the colder months.   Speaking of weather, Hugh can be seen out on the beach in rain, hail, and sometimes shine. It is a harsh environment, but he loves it.   “Achill is home. It is beautiful. You go to Achill because you hope that you’ll get one of those days you have in the summer and never want to leave again. It is the people. It is the clear atmosphere. It is the rain. We spent all day in it today. Even with all my gear on, it still got in down the back my neck. I am soaked to the skin at the moment. And still, it’s gorgeous. It is enjoyable and we’re making something there. We are creating a business. We are creating a brand. We are producing some absolute belters of oysters. It’s just a joy to be around”.