Smoked fish

No, You are not hallucinating. Yes, this is a whole feature dedicated to smoked fish. Please allow me to lure you away from whatever you're doing to take you on a trip down memory lane.

It was the Seventies. My family had decamped to my grandmother’s holiday home on the Welsh coast. She didn’t do barbecues, my gran. Besides which, in those days, sardines only came in tins of tomato sauce and tuna was something you put in a sandwich with mayo. There was fresh fish around though: we’d often get fresh mackerel and serve it with butter and lemon juice. It was amazing.

But the summer holidays were not complete without Gran’s fish pie, which filled the kitchen with a delicious smoky smell. My siblings and I would invariably come back to the cottage after too many hours in the chilly Irish Sea, teeth chattering, no matter how warm the sun was.

I’m sure we ate more smoked than fresh fish when I was a boy because, unless you lived by the sea, getting good fresh fish was harder work than it is now. The historical ‘cure’ for this problem was salting and smoking the fish. Oily fish, such as mackerel and herring, lose a lot of their wonderful flavour and open texture very quickly, so preserving them in a smoker was once more of a necessity than a luxury.

But that never stopped it becoming an art form. If you have ever sampled the famous British smoked delicacies, you will know what I’m talking about. Bucklings (whole, hot-smoked herring) and bloaters (also herring, but cold-smoked, ie uncooked); smoked sprats (small herring); and smoked eels are all still around.

The most famous example of artisan fish smoking is the Arbroath smokie, a small haddock or whiting, gutted, deheaded and cured whole. These are a world away from the turmeric-yellow, smoked haddock fillets that look and taste a bit fake.

It is still far too easy to buy bad smoked fish, but traditional smokeries have attracted the attention of a few fishmongers and some supermarkets. A couple of them also sell online.

So, how can you make sure you are getting the good stuff? Well, buying the whole fish rather than fillets or vac packs. A ‘side’ of smoked salmon might seem like a big investment, but some food halls will slice pieces for you to order. Besides which, good smoked fish should cost a bit more: smoked salmon was, traditionally, as much of a luxury as the fresh stuff.

But enough about that. When did you last try a kipper? Kippers are cold-smoked herrings – fantastic poached or grilled, and served with a poached egg, or on a warm lentil salad with chopped dill and mustard (nothing wintry about that!). The aforementioned Arbroath smokie is even better. It’s hot-smoked, so you need only to flash it under the grill with a smear of butter or splash of cream, and a handful of chives.

Then there are what I think of as the picnic stalwarts: smoked mackerel, sprats, eels and trout. These can all be bought hot-smoked.

OK, let’s get back to that pie. These days, as the proud but tired owner of a fledgling restaurant, I have gone back to my grandmother’s recipes a lot. We make an indulgent version of her pie. I include the recipe overleaf, if only for the reason that the British August is prone to misbehaving. In fact, last ‘summer’ we served pie after pie to rain-soaked customers. One of them asked to speak to me before she left.

I popped out from the kitchen to find her pulling on a sou’wester and waders (and we’re talking Covent Garden, folks, not the Lake District). “Thank you for that pie,” she said in a muffled voice, through her scarf and earmuffs. “It made me feel like I was about 10-and-a-half again.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

A lovely light meal on its own, you can also serve this dish with cold cooked rice or egg noodles, tossed in a little more sesame oil.