What happened to smoked mackerel?

4 days ago

An ode to Nigel

Back in my dinner party hosting days I discovered that a smoked mackerel, served much like this, but with little slices of pumpernickel bread was an incredibly simple, rather beautiful looking - with no effort from me - first course. I think somebody served it to us and so I followed suit. Sure it was a bit of a fiddle to remove the skin and the bones at the table as it were, but honestly you didn't need to do anything else to it. The fish was so delicious. Back then you could get a smoked mackerel easily in your local supermarket. Not any more. Where have they gone?

I'm talking about this because this is a first recipe post - from this wonderful book - Real Food - published way back in 2000 and one of my first Nigel purchases. The structure of this particular book is - in his words:

"I have taken eight of my favourite foods, eight things about which I am truly passionate and produced a set of recipes in which they are especially good, and that I think are worth passing on to you. ... Good ingredients simply prepared and served without ostentation."

Those ingredients are: potatoes, chicken, sausages, garlic, bread, cheese, ice-cream and chocolate. Now if that's not comfort ingredients I don't know what are. Even if some of them are not particularly healthy.

Smoked mackerel is not one one of them but it does feature in the very first recipe - Potato and smoked mackerel dauphinoise, of which one of his admirers - of the many - who made this said:

"I’d learnt that winter Slater recipes had a tendency to be the culinary equivalents of nice hot baths: comforting, warm and prone to send you to sleep. Oh and simple too; barely any shopping or faffing about. This isn’t one for the days when you’re feeling like something light and healthy; go back to the Thai curry for that! No, this is for eating whilst wrapped in a blanket watching some repeats of old favourites on the telly. Gorgeous." WTF Do I Eat Tonight

I have to say that this is something I am going to try sometime soon - hopefully with some smoked mackerel sourced from somewhere. There must be some somewhere surely?

In his Introduction to this book Nigel says:

"What I would like to think I am doing with my recipes is to go most of the way for you, so that you can add, tweak and fiddle until you find something that is perfect for you. You may work a recipe of mine through and think that it needs a splash of cream, a shake of soy sauce or a squirt of lemon. Fine. I am am happy with that. I like the recipes the way they are, and so do my testers, friends and colleagues. But that does not mean that I believe a recipe is a set of rules to be followed slavishly, as if they were carved in stone. There are too many variables for that, and one of those variables is your own taste."

And truth to tell he's not above tweaking his own recipes too. The recipe I have has mustard in the sauce, but I'm pretty sure I saw a later version of his, although it may have been one of his fans, in which the mustard was replaced by horseradish. And I may have to tweak it, if I can't find any smoked mackerel by substituting smoked trout, which is much more radical.

Indeed I did exactly that with one of his other smoked mackerel recipes - Smoked mackerel pie - because I just couldn't find any smoked mackerel but nevertheless it was just gorgeous. So gorgeous I made it again although this time I actually found some smoked mackerel in Doncaster's Colonial Food Stores, although I noted that it was "very tough and difficult to remove bones and skin, but also good though" which is not how I remember the smoked mackerels of my younger days which were luscious and soft. I see I also added a few peas to my first version and a bit of spinach to the second, so I obviously can't resist fiddling with other people's recipes. I think I thought it just needed some kind of vegetable for the vitamins. The other great thing about this recipe was that it introduced me to the notion of the pillow pie - stuff put between two sheets of puff pastry and cooked. A concept that I have used many times - particularly with leftovers.

The pie on the right - Hot smoked fish and leek pie (recipe on the (4th Estate website) is a later, and more complicated version of the same thing, but that one includes smoked salmon, leeks, potatoes and herbs as well.

Because I had had such difficulty finding any smoked mackerel in the shops I also tried to find some Australian recipes for this particular fish. After all those Good Fish guides were saying that mackerel was one of the few fish that it was alright to eat here in Australia. So you would think that you could find smoked mackerel as well. Of course there are small companies that do smoke mackerel here, but difficult to find their product. Mind you it is also difficult to find mackerel, no matter that it is what we should be eating.

And the big Australian sites - delicious., Taste and even Recipe Tin Eats had virtually nothing. Really the only recipe I found was from Colin Fassnidge on the Taste website for Smoked mackerel croquettes which are a highly popular dish in his restaurant. And they are not just smoked mackerel either. The main fishy ingredient is white fish fillets. The smoked mackerel is just to boost the flavour I'm guessing. It's also a cheffy kind of recipe. Not quick and easy.

So I searched a few other cookbooks on my shelf some of which referenced smoked mackerel but then didn't give any recipes - I'm looking at you Jane Grigson - so returned to the internet where I found that Nigella with her Pasta with mackerel, marsala and pine nuts, and Jamie with his Smoked mackerel carbonara favoured the pasta genre and not much else. Ottolenghi went for couscous - Smoked mackerel couscous with horseradish yoghurt and the BBC's Good Food website had a few, the most original of which was a Japanese smoked-mackerel rice bowl from Katy Field.

So I gave up, although still wondering why isn't there more? There was the occasional salad I guess, and also the occasional pâté, but they were not very exciting.

So I went back to Nigel who somewhere said that smoked mackerel is one of his favourite fish. And this is borne out by the fact that all of my Nigel books have at least one, if not several, recipes for smoked mackerel. So here is a selection - I'm ignoring some - pasta, sandwiches, and pâtés even if the pastes are spread on puff pastry and rolled up into a sausage, sliced, baked and served as a nibble. That said, most of them are supremely simple - basic even.

Salads - yes I know I ignored everyone else's salads, but his were more interesting: A salad of smoked mackerel and potatoes, which is a variation of a salad from Real Food - Smoked mackerel, hot potatoes and bitter leaves, the recipe for which does not seem to be online. This one is quite interesting in that the mackerel, which has been marinating in the salad dressing is warmed in a pan with the sliced cooked potatoes and the bitter leaves. Then there is A salad of mackerel, bacon and potatoes. I should also add here his Smoked mackerel and celeriac coleslaw shown here on the website Scaredy Cat Kitchen.

Another four - of various kinds, which demonstrate his love of the ingredient. Warm smoked mackerel with broad beans and tarragon; Tea-time mackerel/BBC Good Food, which is a kind of toastie; Broccoli and smoked mackerel gratin (it can be made with cauliflower instead) and Pearl barley kedgeree of which he says:

"You could swap the mackerel for poached smoked haddock and use rice instead of pearl barley. My own temptation would be to include some wild rice, for the textural contrast."

So I'm going to search again in the shops for smoked mackerel. Maybe that small supermarket almost next to Aldi, or the local IGA, maybe even the deli in the Eltham mall although I don't have much hope for them. And then I might have a go at the pie again - it really was superb and definitely the Dauphinoise. Maybe some time next week. I feel I have been dealing with leftovers of one kind or another since Christmas so it would be nice to launch into something completely new for which I actually have to buy the ingredients. Though one can always use smoked trout instead.

Thank you Nigel.

THE LETTERS L AND M

I forgot to post my L photograph yesterday - so here it is Lines - I didn't find much else - lamp, letterbox, another lines, library, logs and leaves. For M - see mosaic - part of a highly decorated letterbox which was apparently made during COVID a neighbour who saw me taking the photograph said. There was also mess, melaleuca, mauve and man.