Try these lovely Scottish Smokies in Hot Cream Sauce taken from the Dairy Diary.
A kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split in a butterfly fashion from tail to head, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold-smoked over smouldering wood chips (typically oak).
Did you know?
For many thousands of years our early ancestors have been “smoking” meat, and although we’re not entirely sure how we stumbled upon this process, we do know that in the early years it was as a means to avoid spoilage and preserve meat rather than just create great flavours. Communities that lived on the coasts in the Stone Age were surrounded by a never-ending source of fish, but many also had months where hunting was less fruitful, and so they needed to create a way of preserving their catches.
Ingredients
Scottish kiln-smoked kipper fillets with butter 200g boil-in-the-bag pack
Double cream 150ml (¼ pint)
Coarse-grain mustard 2 tsp
Hot horseradish sauce 2 tsp
Finely grated extra mature Scottish Cheddar 4 tbsp
Toast to serve
Directions
1 Preheat oven to 200°C/180°fan/Gas 6. Open up bag of fish, peel off skin and discard. Cut fish into large chunks and divide between two (150-200ml/5-7fl oz) ovenproof dishes. Pop butter from the pack on top
2 Pour a little cream over fish, then mix mustard, horseradish, a little sea salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper in the cream pot. Pour into dishes. Sprinkle with cheese
3 Bake for 12-15 minutes until bubbling, then put under a hot grill to brown the cheese topping
4 Serve with thick slices of toast, cut into triangles for dipping