Anchovy Straws

The smell of these coming out of the oven is the smell of a good evening about to happen. Warm pastry, toasted Parmesan, and that deep, savoury hum of anchovy that makes people lean towards the kitchen and ask what you're making.

They're more refined than cheese straws, though they take no more effort. The anchovy does the heavy lifting: salt, savour, a quiet insistence that makes the first one lead directly to the third. With a cold glass of something dry, white wine or fino sherry if you have it, they become the sort of thing around which a whole evening can form. People standing in the kitchen, talking with their hands, reaching for another straw without looking.

I make these whenever someone is coming round and I want the house to smell like I've been paying attention. The truth is they take about twenty minutes from packet to plate. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, and this one barely needs raising its voice. All-butter puff pastry from the freezer, a tin of good anchovies, a bit of Parmesan. We're only making dinner. Or rather, we're making the bit before dinner that everyone remembers best.

I wrote it down in the notebook last winter: anchovies, pastry, cold Chablis, the kitchen full of people. That was the whole entry. It didn't need more.