Fish Pie

There's a smell that fills the kitchen when you poach smoked haddock in milk. Warm, savoury, faintly smoky. It smells like Friday. Like the week is done and something good is on its way.

Fish pie isn't complicated. You poach the fish, make a simple sauce from the poaching milk, pile everything into a dish, and cover it with mashed potato. That's it. The skill, if there is one, is in the sourcing. Good smoked haddock, the undyed sort that's pale and golden rather than that alarming yellow. A piece of salmon for sweetness. A handful of prawns because they belong here. The fish does the work. You just need to stay out of its way.

I make this most Fridays through the cold months. The notebook has a dozen versions, all essentially the same, differing only in what the fishmonger had that morning. Sometimes there are hard-boiled eggs tucked in amongst the fish, which is proper and good. The mash on top wants to be generous and buttery, roughed up with a fork so the peaks catch and crisp in the oven. There are few better feelings than carrying a bubbling fish pie to the table on a dark evening and watching someone's shoulders drop.