Haddock Mornay

The kitchen smells of warm milk and bay. That's the first sign you're on the right track. The haddock has been sitting in gently trembling milk for a few minutes, just long enough to turn opaque and tender, and now that milk, flavoured with the fish and the peppercorns, is going to become the sauce. Nothing wasted. Nothing added that doesn't earn its place.

Haddock Mornay is a dish I come back to when the evenings draw in and the idea of standing at the hob for an hour feels like too much. It asks very little of you. Poach the fish. Make a sauce. Grill it until it blisters. Twenty minutes, start to finish, and what you carry to the table is a bubbling dish of something that looks and tastes like you tried harder than you did.

The cheese sauce is the heart of it. Not thick, not claggy, but smooth and savoury with a nudge of mustard that stops it sitting too heavily. Good Cheddar, the kind with some bite to it. A grating of nutmeg, because nutmeg and cheese sauce have always understood each other. It coats the fish, goes under the grill, and comes out golden and freckled with brown.

We're only making dinner. But this is the kind of dinner that makes someone's shoulders drop when you put the plate in front of them. Right food, right evening.