Creamed Smoked Haddock on Toast

January. The kitchen window black by five o'clock. Something on the radio you're half listening to. This is the kind of evening that asks for creamed haddock on toast.

It's not a complicated thing. You poach a piece of smoked haddock in milk, flake it, make a simple sauce from the poaching liquid, and spoon the whole lot over a piece of toast that can take the weight. Twenty minutes, start to finish. But it fills the kitchen with a smell that is warm and smoky and quietly generous, the kind that makes someone wander in from the other room and ask what you're making.

The trick, if there is one, is the poaching milk. It takes on the smoke and salt of the fish as it simmers, and when you use it to build the sauce, you're folding all that flavour back in. Nothing wasted. The cream at the end is just a whisper, enough to round the edges without making it heavy. A squeeze of lemon. Some parsley. Good toast. We're only making dinner.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: haddock, cream, toast, Tuesday. It comes back every winter when the evenings close in and I want something that feels like care without fuss. Right food, right evening.