Cullen skink

Scotland has given so much to the world: bagpipes, man-skirts and Michael Gove to name just a few examples. My personal favourite, though, is cullen skink, the comfortingly creamy smoked-haddock soup. So imagine my joy when I heard about the recent rediscovery of a Robbie Burns poem dedicated to the delicacy! Of course, this juvenile verse lacks the polish of his classics, ‘To a Mouse’, ‘To a Louse’ and even ‘Address to a Haggis’. But it captures my feelings about cullen skink quite uncannily.

To a soup
On drinking a bowl of cullen skink

The best laid ’cipes o’ mams an’ men

Gang aft a-gley

But “a finer soup than the skink o’ Cullen”?

Tha’ I canna say.

Tatties an’ alliums, thou art blest

When mashit wi’ milk in the soup that’s best –

All cozyin’ up tae the fish so yeller

(I ken, I ken, ’tis a blastit smeller).

Cawl, chowder, bouillabaisse,

Minestrone, wonton… och, they’re less

Than home’s auldest kindness o’ cup.

Aye, life tastes better when I thee sup!

O cullen skink,

Ye may wel stink

O’ smokit wee haddock fishies.

But pleasure ye spread

An’ put worries ta bed,

Wen steamin’ in ma ikea china dishies.

Leekie all a’cock,

Teacek o’ tunnock,

Girders wrought intae irn bru,

Haggis, porridge, deep frite marsbar too…

Ium! We hae meat and we can eat.

Sae let the Lord be thankit.

More! We hae skink and we can drink

God’s culinary comfort blanket.

Enough bad poetry. Bring on the recipe…

Takes: about 40 mins

Serves: three as a main course if you’re generous with the bread

Ingredients

About 400 grammes of smoked haddock fillets (preferably not the bright yellow kind, despite what the poem says) – or other smoked white fish

Something from the allium family (one medium-sized onion or two leeks – or possibly even a small bunch of spring onions)

Two biggish tatties (that’s potatoes to us Sassenachs)

A generous knob of butter

About 300 ml of water (OK I admit it, I usually use half white wine, half water)

About 500 ml of milk (OK, I admit it, I usually use half cream, half milk)

Something green like a bit of chopped parsley, chives or tarragon (optional)

Salt (probably not much, as smoked fish can be salty) and pepper

Method

Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan over low heat. Meanwhile, chop up the onion. (If using leeks, remove the tough outer layers and the topmost ends, slice up what’s left and wash off any grit.) Then fry the onion bits (or leeks) gently in the butter for about ten minutes, so that they go translucent and soft without going brown.

While the onions are cooking, put the fish in a small saucepan, cover with the cold water and bring to the boil. After a couple of minutes’ simmering, the fish should be cooked – that is, opaque, and easy to flake and skin. Take the fish out of the water (but don’t throw this precious cooking liquid away), remove the skin and flake it up with a fork.

You should still have time to scrub your two potatoes and cut them into 1–1.5 cm cubes before the onions have finished cooking. If not, hoots mon!, they just can fry a little longer.

Once the onions are cooked, add the potato cubes, stir them round and fry for a minute or two. Now add the cooking liquid from the haddock, bring back to the boil, put the lid on and simmer until the potatoes are well mashable (about 25 mins).

Now add the milk (and/or crème fraîche or sour cream) and bring back to the boil.

At this point, you’re pretty much done. You can either bung in the flaked haddock and mash the whole lot with a masher or you can liquidise the mixture with a hand blender, before stirring in the haddock. 

But I think good old Felicity Cloake has got it just right in her Guardian column. She takes out a large spoonful of potato and onion and replaces it with half the haddock, before blending. Then she stirs in the reserved potato and haddock bits to give some pleasing lumps.

Garnish with green stuff and eat with crusty bread or toast. Life will immediately seem better.



Tip of the day
You can give your cullen skink some fancy new-world name like "smoked haddock chowder", but it will immediately cease to be comfort food. Same goes for Frenchifying. Hachis parmentier and riz au lait are simply nowhere near as feel-good as shepherd's pie or rice pudding.