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Bring the Bombay Duck back to Bucks
I AM well known for campaigning on various serious issues, but perhaps it's time to give our readers food for thought on a matter of culinary importance for Bucks.
I want to organise a petition to bring back the Bombay Duck.
Younger readers may think it's some kind of exotic creature that used to nest on the waters of the River Wye in High Wycombe.
But no, it was a weird and wonderful dish that used to be on the menu of Indian restaurants up and down the land.
It was a brown, foul-smelling skeletal type of dried fish that you used to order along with your popadoms after a few pints of shandy.
I recall they used to cost about 25p each, and my friends and I ordered them by the bucket-load. We had no idea at the time what the Bombay Duck actually was, and there were many outlandish and revolting theories as to its origins.
But it was an essential cult dish of my youth and I was therefore perturbed a few years ago when it suddenly and mysteriously disappeared off the menus of Indian restaurants in my hometown of High Wycombe.
No one could quite tell me why but waiters simply shrugged and said they could no longer get hold of it.
Finally, some light was shed on the mystery when a national newspaper ran a spread on how Bombay Duck was banned. I recall reading how the fish was left to dry for eons on the banks of the Ganges before being shipped out to customers.
The internet tells me it was, in fact, banned in 1997 by the European Commission of the European Union. It was prohibited on the grounds that the EC only allows fish imports from India from approved freezing and canning factories.
There was, apparently, no sanitary evidence against the delicacy and no recorded cases of food poisoning. But, as Bombay Duck is not produced in factories, it had to go.
Another prime example of Euro meddling in great British culture. And yes, no mistake there dear reader, because Indian restaurants have now become embedded in this country's culture.
Bombay Duck came to mind last week, entirely by random, when a colleague in our newsroom was discussing possible bans on food colourings. This food fascism has just gone too far, and it's time to redress the balance.
So I did a quick bit of research and finally discovered what the dish actually was. The Bombay Duck, or bummalo, is a lizardfish native to the waters between Mumbai and Kutch in the Arabian Sea, as well as the Bay of Bengal and the China Sea. The fish is normally dried and salted before being eaten, and its odour is so powerful that it has to be transported in air-tight containers.
Legend has it that its name was coined by Robert Clive who tasted it during his conquest of Bengal.
The good news is that I now understand the EC adjusted the regulations so that the fish can still be dried in the open air but has to be packed in an approved packing station. So it can be sold and eaten here after all.
The bad news is that it's disappeared off local menus, possibly forever. I set intrepid reporter Andy Carswell the task of tracking down the Bombay Duck in Bucks, and he rang nine restaurants in the Wycombe area.
Andy, who mistakenly thought I was taking advantage of him by asking him to research a night out for me with Mrs Editor's Chair, drew a Bombay blank.
It did not appear to be on the menu of any of these restaurants and some said they had never ever sold it. One actually said it couldn't be sold in restaurants any longer.
Well this is wrong, for Grace Money of the Government's Food Standards Agency confirmed: "Bombay Duck can be imported into the UK provided the product comes from an EU-approved establishment in India, is imported with the correct documents via a Border Inspection Post and it meets food safety requirements."
This may all sound like trivial nonsense, but I bet you there's a heap of middle-aged lardy layabouts such as myself who yearn for the return of this spectacular dish.
So who out there will back me in my campaign to Bring the Ducks Back to Bucks?
1:35pm Friday 25th April 2008
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