Anchovy Toast

Late in the evening, after everything else has been cleared away, there are times when the only thing that feels right is something salty and sharp on hot bread. Anchovy toast is that thing. It isn't a recipe in any meaningful sense. It's an assembly. But it's an assembly that has outlasted most of what passes for clever food, and it will outlast whatever comes next.

The Victorians served it as a savoury at the end of a long dinner, a sharp note after the pudding, something to reset the palate before the port. I serve it because it takes five minutes and tastes like exactly what I want at nine o'clock on a Thursday when the kitchen is quiet and there's half a bottle of something cold in the fridge. Different centuries, same instinct.

You need three things and none of them can be poor. Good bread, the kind with a crust that resists the knife. Real butter, unsalted, so you control the salt. And anchovies worth eating, dark and soft and rich, from a tin you'd happily open just to smell. Gentleman's Relish if you can find it, that peculiar, pungent paste that tastes of anchovy and butter and spice and something faintly Victorian that nobody has ever quite been able to name. Either way. Your kitchen, your rules.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago. Just three words: anchovies, butter, toast. It didn't need more. Some things don't.