Tom's smoked fish gratin
Today's recipe - and it's a real Friday special - comes courtesy of Leeds-based writer and photographer Tom Glencross. If this recipe leaves you intrigued and you want to keep Tom in mackerel and 35mm film, I highly, highly recommend sliding into his DMs and arranging the purchase and delivery of a print of one of his incredible photos. No home should be without one.
Oh, and in the spirit of supporting artists at this trying moment in time, head to Bandcamp and buy avant-sax guru Ben Vince's latest LP, the Glencross-featuring screamer Don't Give Your Life. Perhaps somewhere down the line we'll find a dinner befitting of that record's spooked-out charms. Halloween'll be here in the blink of an eye...
For now, though, let Tom talk you through a piscine dream...
Mackerel – the eternal wanderer. It’s a pelagic fish - always darting about - and it keeps it’s energising oils on its skin and in the flesh ready to be metabolised at any moment. Lucky for us these oils are nutritious and taste incredible. Just looking at a mackerel you can’t help but feel awed. It’s a sublime and beautiful fish, striped with iridescent blue-green zebra marbling and a pearlescent belly.
A Balearic fish in the truest sense: it’s Mediterranean and it’s Cornish; it’s swimming pool aquamarine and its roof-slate grey; it’s a predator, yet without an armour of scales it appears immaculate, almost vulnerable. It’s a yearning end-of-summer pop ballad of a fish, a heartbreaker.
They’re also extremely obliging, and they can be caught from a beach, a pier or a boat with a cheap rod and something shiny. One of the most effective ways to catch a mackerel is a hook baited with strips of its own silvery skin, which I feel is a perfect illustration of the simple and elegant symbiotic relationship we can have with responsibly caught fish.
Mackerel stocks are beyond plentiful. The first time I caught one was using a handline fishing reel on a two hour day boat trip from Weymouth harbour. A handline is like a kite string you wind around a wooden frame, and it was rigged with a series of hooks attached to some attractive artificial feathers. Just as I hauled my mackerel from the waters - the first fish I’d ever caught - I was prizing it from the hook when a gull swooped in from nowhere and stole it. The boat’s skipper shouted cheerily, “That’s good luck, that!”
He was not wrong. Caught and eaten fresh, a fillet of this miraculous fish surpasses sea bass in its delicacy. Grilled on a BBQ with its oils blistering and charring the flesh the mackerel is as close to food perfection as you can get. Smoked and split on the counter of your fishmonger or sold in blister packs in the supermarket, it’s ludicrously inexpensive for a food of its quality and exceptional taste.
For me, eating half-decent food was something I arrived at later in life, like listening to ambient or getting into Tilda Swinton films. It’s a sad but sobering fact, many people don’t have access to good, wholesome food. There isn’t really a popular food culture in the UK, and ‘street food’ usually means buying a £9 hotdog from an immaculately restored classic van parked in a shopping mall food court, served to you by some Exeter uni graduates-turned-entrepreneurs that look like Mumford & Sons but call themselves Grillerz With Attitude.
Slow, considered food is often a privilege that the working week doesn’t have room for, and it’s usually pricey, wanky, and inaccessible. This is why we are doubly blessed with the mackerel, our most inexpensive and plentiful fish, and I believe our most versatile and tasty fish too. Approach this humble dish with the twin spirits of versatility and experimentation. Swap out ingredients you don’t have, leave out ones you don’t like, and add some flavour of your own.
Makes 4 large slabs or 5-6 more modest slices
Ingredients:
A big onion (Spanish; white and sweet; cannonball; or just a regular white onion)
A couple of leeks
A few potatoes (Yesterday’s leftover boiled/roasted potatoes, or today’s freshly made)
Smoked mackerel (Smoked fish of any kind will do. Try and get it undyed if you’re using another fish)
Glass of white wine (Anything will do)
Kale or spring greens or spinach
Double cream (Single is fine. But come on, double)
Fresh thyme (Dried is good, just add it a bit earlier to the pot)
Breadcrumbs
A couple of cheeses, finely grated (I use cheddar, and any hard Italian cheese)
Method:
Get your big old onion. Dice half, slice the other. Heat slowly in a chunk of butter, and don’t hold back on the butter. Use a nice big casserole dish or heavy cooking pot.
Chop up some leeks however you like to. I like them in half-moons. Celery and spring onions will do, or nothing at all. I put in beetroot once, the whole thing turned pink and was banging. Fry these in with the onions and butter, get the heat no higher than medium-low.
Now you might have got some leftover roasties (unlikely) or some leftover boiled potatoes from an overzealous meal you couldn’t finish. Just crush these up a bit and they’re good to go. If not, boil a handful and a half of any kind of potato you can find, and take them somewhere between parboiled and fully boiled. Drain, chop and crush roughly, and set aside. Anything from almost mashed to bashed quarters, it’s all good.
When your leeks and onions are completely fucked up and sweaty, pour in a large glass of white and whack up the heat to full for a minute to get it screaming to burn off some of the alcohol. Then get the heat back down to a simmer.
Chuck your rough chopped spring greens/kale/spinach in there and lay a lid on it to wilt.
Strip your thyme off its woody stems and start sprinkling them into the onions, leeks, wine and wilting greens. I like to uncover and recover the pot as I go, like you’re pulling the duvet back to give them a little kiss then recovering them again. But you can’t get enough so you keep going at it.
Now I like to use smoked mackerel fillets, chopped into big chunks with the skins on the bottom. You might want to take the skins off. You might want to use another smoked fish. Undyed is always best.
After 10-15 minutes and the pan is pleasantly mushy, chuck in your crushed potatoes, your smoked fish, and a small-ish tub of double cream. Fold gently for half a minute like a warm shirt so you keep those fish chunks solid. Then heat off, the club lights come back on, the track finishes and you let your ingredients wander round and mingle, knackered in their sweaty haze. Salt and season to your taste.
Equal parts bread crumbs, finely grated cheddar, and finely grated hard Italian cheese. Pour your pan of slop into a big baking dish, then spread your breadcrumbs and cheese liberally on top.
Bake at 200 degrees plus for 15-20 minutes, until the top of your gratin browns nicely and knocks hollow like a mahogany trap door.
Serve with… friends. I eat this just as a slab, but its great with some broccoli heads briefly steamed and left with some bite. Or some buttery, minted peas. I bet it would be good with broad beans tossed in a bit of olive oil and lemon juice. All I know for sure is that it goes really well with each bite dipped into some fruity and spicy HP sauce, and a cool pint of stout.
Playlist:
I started off with Alec Mansion. Like so much of the music I love this album was introduced to me by my dear friend Oscar. Some saccharine Belgian pop from the early-80s, now a cult classic. I’m a pushover and this flirty little album had me at the cover.
Then we drift across Europe to Alex Cortiz, dutch dance heavyweight turned downtempo sugar daddy – music to wilt your fucking greens to if you know what I mean.
Beach Boys for when the large dry white you poured yourself hits and you’re pleasantly fizzed enough to be able to overlook the Manson darkness all of their music is drenched in. Time to pretend you’re stuck in an eternal 7.30pm sundown selling t-shirts to tourists in Pacific Beach in 1971.
With mackerel being such an island staple I wanted to conjure some folky English weirdness. Dean Blunt does this like no one else, eerie and weird city sounds, experimental dingy R&B fractured with these thin ethereal vocal samples. The Durutti Column are so melancholy they break through to another place, everything tinged with sweetness. Music for the Balearic islands, for wheeling gulls, lost loves, and caramelised onions.
Been a big fan of Gigi Masin since Ben Vince introduced me to his LP with south London experimental demigod Charles Hayward. Talk to the Sea on Music from Memory is an unmissable album, and this track "Snake Theory" is the kind of music you dream about being able to make. Sing it whilst you’re watching the butter slowly melt, or equally let it echo around your bathroom in the shower.
Kate Bush: enough said. If mackerel dream, they dream about being reincarnated as Kate Bush. Coupled with Van Morrison you have rootsy Gaelic folk boiled and distilled.
The Max Essa and Part Time tunes are slow jams, very simple stuff. You should cook this dish slowly, with plenty of time to rest and space to breathe. Close your eyes and transport yourself. When your gratin’s approaching peak crisp, whack up Brian Ellis as loud as you can tolerate. Another introduction from Oscar Smith. A tightrope between West Coast funk trash and pop perfection, a spinning silver dollar of a tune. From the 2017 album Mirror, Mirror on Chit Chat Records.
Nat King Cole’s “Stardust” has deeply troubled me for a long time. There’s some Beach Boys darkness in there, possibly worse. Maybe play it once the meal is over, a swansong to mop up your plate with. Why do we have to keep returning to this sense of loss? To stay true to the Balearic spirit. Savour each bite of your mackerel gratin until it’s over.
¡Salud!
Oh, and in the spirit of supporting artists at this trying moment in time, head to Bandcamp and buy avant-sax guru Ben Vince's latest LP, the Glencross-featuring screamer Don't Give Your Life. Perhaps somewhere down the line we'll find a dinner befitting of that record's spooked-out charms. Halloween'll be here in the blink of an eye...
For now, though, let Tom talk you through a piscine dream...
Mackerel – the eternal wanderer. It’s a pelagic fish - always darting about - and it keeps it’s energising oils on its skin and in the flesh ready to be metabolised at any moment. Lucky for us these oils are nutritious and taste incredible. Just looking at a mackerel you can’t help but feel awed. It’s a sublime and beautiful fish, striped with iridescent blue-green zebra marbling and a pearlescent belly.
A Balearic fish in the truest sense: it’s Mediterranean and it’s Cornish; it’s swimming pool aquamarine and its roof-slate grey; it’s a predator, yet without an armour of scales it appears immaculate, almost vulnerable. It’s a yearning end-of-summer pop ballad of a fish, a heartbreaker.
They’re also extremely obliging, and they can be caught from a beach, a pier or a boat with a cheap rod and something shiny. One of the most effective ways to catch a mackerel is a hook baited with strips of its own silvery skin, which I feel is a perfect illustration of the simple and elegant symbiotic relationship we can have with responsibly caught fish.
Mackerel stocks are beyond plentiful. The first time I caught one was using a handline fishing reel on a two hour day boat trip from Weymouth harbour. A handline is like a kite string you wind around a wooden frame, and it was rigged with a series of hooks attached to some attractive artificial feathers. Just as I hauled my mackerel from the waters - the first fish I’d ever caught - I was prizing it from the hook when a gull swooped in from nowhere and stole it. The boat’s skipper shouted cheerily, “That’s good luck, that!”
He was not wrong. Caught and eaten fresh, a fillet of this miraculous fish surpasses sea bass in its delicacy. Grilled on a BBQ with its oils blistering and charring the flesh the mackerel is as close to food perfection as you can get. Smoked and split on the counter of your fishmonger or sold in blister packs in the supermarket, it’s ludicrously inexpensive for a food of its quality and exceptional taste.
For me, eating half-decent food was something I arrived at later in life, like listening to ambient or getting into Tilda Swinton films. It’s a sad but sobering fact, many people don’t have access to good, wholesome food. There isn’t really a popular food culture in the UK, and ‘street food’ usually means buying a £9 hotdog from an immaculately restored classic van parked in a shopping mall food court, served to you by some Exeter uni graduates-turned-entrepreneurs that look like Mumford & Sons but call themselves Grillerz With Attitude.
Slow, considered food is often a privilege that the working week doesn’t have room for, and it’s usually pricey, wanky, and inaccessible. This is why we are doubly blessed with the mackerel, our most inexpensive and plentiful fish, and I believe our most versatile and tasty fish too. Approach this humble dish with the twin spirits of versatility and experimentation. Swap out ingredients you don’t have, leave out ones you don’t like, and add some flavour of your own.
Makes 4 large slabs or 5-6 more modest slices
 |
| A Flickr-sourced image of two Swedish children 'riding the Mackerel torpedo' |
Ingredients:
A big onion (Spanish; white and sweet; cannonball; or just a regular white onion)
A couple of leeks
A few potatoes (Yesterday’s leftover boiled/roasted potatoes, or today’s freshly made)
Smoked mackerel (Smoked fish of any kind will do. Try and get it undyed if you’re using another fish)
Glass of white wine (Anything will do)
Kale or spring greens or spinach
Double cream (Single is fine. But come on, double)
Fresh thyme (Dried is good, just add it a bit earlier to the pot)
Breadcrumbs
A couple of cheeses, finely grated (I use cheddar, and any hard Italian cheese)
Method:
Get your big old onion. Dice half, slice the other. Heat slowly in a chunk of butter, and don’t hold back on the butter. Use a nice big casserole dish or heavy cooking pot.
Chop up some leeks however you like to. I like them in half-moons. Celery and spring onions will do, or nothing at all. I put in beetroot once, the whole thing turned pink and was banging. Fry these in with the onions and butter, get the heat no higher than medium-low.
Now you might have got some leftover roasties (unlikely) or some leftover boiled potatoes from an overzealous meal you couldn’t finish. Just crush these up a bit and they’re good to go. If not, boil a handful and a half of any kind of potato you can find, and take them somewhere between parboiled and fully boiled. Drain, chop and crush roughly, and set aside. Anything from almost mashed to bashed quarters, it’s all good.
When your leeks and onions are completely fucked up and sweaty, pour in a large glass of white and whack up the heat to full for a minute to get it screaming to burn off some of the alcohol. Then get the heat back down to a simmer.
Chuck your rough chopped spring greens/kale/spinach in there and lay a lid on it to wilt.
Strip your thyme off its woody stems and start sprinkling them into the onions, leeks, wine and wilting greens. I like to uncover and recover the pot as I go, like you’re pulling the duvet back to give them a little kiss then recovering them again. But you can’t get enough so you keep going at it.
Now I like to use smoked mackerel fillets, chopped into big chunks with the skins on the bottom. You might want to take the skins off. You might want to use another smoked fish. Undyed is always best.
After 10-15 minutes and the pan is pleasantly mushy, chuck in your crushed potatoes, your smoked fish, and a small-ish tub of double cream. Fold gently for half a minute like a warm shirt so you keep those fish chunks solid. Then heat off, the club lights come back on, the track finishes and you let your ingredients wander round and mingle, knackered in their sweaty haze. Salt and season to your taste.
Equal parts bread crumbs, finely grated cheddar, and finely grated hard Italian cheese. Pour your pan of slop into a big baking dish, then spread your breadcrumbs and cheese liberally on top.
Bake at 200 degrees plus for 15-20 minutes, until the top of your gratin browns nicely and knocks hollow like a mahogany trap door.
Serve with… friends. I eat this just as a slab, but its great with some broccoli heads briefly steamed and left with some bite. Or some buttery, minted peas. I bet it would be good with broad beans tossed in a bit of olive oil and lemon juice. All I know for sure is that it goes really well with each bite dipped into some fruity and spicy HP sauce, and a cool pint of stout.
 |
| Not Tom's gratin sadly, but this Flickr-sourced example of the dish is even more enticing than the prospect of a hot bath after a mid-winter morning football match isn't it? Bonus points for pairing it with what I imagine to be one of those slightly nutty, earthy beers that the French do so well. |
Playlist:
I started off with Alec Mansion. Like so much of the music I love this album was introduced to me by my dear friend Oscar. Some saccharine Belgian pop from the early-80s, now a cult classic. I’m a pushover and this flirty little album had me at the cover.
Then we drift across Europe to Alex Cortiz, dutch dance heavyweight turned downtempo sugar daddy – music to wilt your fucking greens to if you know what I mean.
Beach Boys for when the large dry white you poured yourself hits and you’re pleasantly fizzed enough to be able to overlook the Manson darkness all of their music is drenched in. Time to pretend you’re stuck in an eternal 7.30pm sundown selling t-shirts to tourists in Pacific Beach in 1971.
With mackerel being such an island staple I wanted to conjure some folky English weirdness. Dean Blunt does this like no one else, eerie and weird city sounds, experimental dingy R&B fractured with these thin ethereal vocal samples. The Durutti Column are so melancholy they break through to another place, everything tinged with sweetness. Music for the Balearic islands, for wheeling gulls, lost loves, and caramelised onions.
Been a big fan of Gigi Masin since Ben Vince introduced me to his LP with south London experimental demigod Charles Hayward. Talk to the Sea on Music from Memory is an unmissable album, and this track "Snake Theory" is the kind of music you dream about being able to make. Sing it whilst you’re watching the butter slowly melt, or equally let it echo around your bathroom in the shower.
Kate Bush: enough said. If mackerel dream, they dream about being reincarnated as Kate Bush. Coupled with Van Morrison you have rootsy Gaelic folk boiled and distilled.
The Max Essa and Part Time tunes are slow jams, very simple stuff. You should cook this dish slowly, with plenty of time to rest and space to breathe. Close your eyes and transport yourself. When your gratin’s approaching peak crisp, whack up Brian Ellis as loud as you can tolerate. Another introduction from Oscar Smith. A tightrope between West Coast funk trash and pop perfection, a spinning silver dollar of a tune. From the 2017 album Mirror, Mirror on Chit Chat Records.
Nat King Cole’s “Stardust” has deeply troubled me for a long time. There’s some Beach Boys darkness in there, possibly worse. Maybe play it once the meal is over, a swansong to mop up your plate with. Why do we have to keep returning to this sense of loss? To stay true to the Balearic spirit. Savour each bite of your mackerel gratin until it’s over.
¡Salud!
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