Arbroath Smokies

A couple of weeks ago my friend came to visit from Arbroath, a town famous for its twinned, brown smoked haddock. These fish are tied in pairs and then hot smoked over oak or beech chips in small batches. They've been granted Protected Geographical Indication or PGI, so you can't smoke some haddock in your garden in Pollockshields and try to pass them off as the real thing. Or, I guess you could try, but it wouldn't be right. 

I had never tried them before, and they were just incredible. I normally eat more commercially produced smoked fish so the flavour of the wood coming through the flesh was a miracle. You can't replicate that on a large scale. After splitting them open and removing all of the aggressive little bones, I fried them in a bit of butter. Served with boiled new potatoes and peas, this was one of the easiest and most delicious meals we had and nothing has been better than "easy and delicious" this past month.