Kippers with Butter and Brown Bread

The smell reaches you before you see them. Woodsmoke and salt and something briny that belongs to cold harbours and early mornings. A pair of kippers under a hot grill is one of the most direct pleasures the British kitchen has to offer, and one of the least appreciated.

I eat kippers on dark mornings when the heating hasn't caught up with the house. There's a fishmonger at the Saturday market who gets his from Craster, proper oak-smoked, the colour of old mahogany. I buy them when they're there and don't complain when they're not. Good kippers are worth waiting for. Bad kippers aren't worth the plate.

The recipe, if you can call it that, is barely a recipe at all. Grill them. Butter them. Eat them with brown bread and a mug of tea so strong it could hold a spoon upright. There's nothing to improve, nothing to add, nothing clever to do. The smoke has already done the work. Your job is to stay out of the way.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: kippers, butter, toast, Tuesday, rain on the window. Some meals don't need more words than that.