Cullen Skink

January. Rain on the windows since morning and the light never quite arriving. This is the weather for Cullen Skink. Not a soup you make in summer, not a soup that makes any sense when the evenings are long and warm. It belongs to the dark months, to kitchens with the heating on and coats still damp by the door.

The town of Cullen sits on the Moray coast, and this soup is its quiet gift to the rest of us. Smoked haddock, potatoes, milk. Three ingredients doing all the work, the smoke from the fish seeping into the milk as it poaches, the potatoes collapsing to give the broth its body. It smells like a harbour kitchen. Like salt air and woodsmoke and butter in a pan.

I don't make it often, which is probably why I look forward to it. The first bowl of the winter goes in the notebook every year. The note is always the same: smoky, rich, right. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate in front of someone on a cold night, and this is the bowl I reach for when the weather asks for it.

A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. The proportions here are a starting point. More cream if you like it richer, more potato if you want it thicker, a little less milk if you prefer something closer to a stew. Your kitchen, your rules. We're only making dinner.