Mackerel with Gooseberry Sauce

The gooseberries arrive at the market in June, small and hard and almost aggressively green, piled into punnets that nobody under forty seems to pick up. Their loss. There is no better companion for a piece of oily fish than a sharp gooseberry sauce, and the fact that both are at their peak in the same few weeks of midsummer is one of those quiet arrangements that English cookery got right centuries ago. The market decides. You just have to pay attention.

Mackerel is the fish I buy most often. It's cheap, it's sustainable, it's beautiful, and when it's fresh it smells of the sea rather than of fish. The fishmonger at the Saturday market keeps it on ice, the skin catching the light, iridescent blues and greens like spilt petrol on a wet road. A fish like that needs almost nothing. A hot grill, a few minutes, a bit of salt. The gooseberry sauce is what turns it from something good into something you sit back from and feel quietly pleased about.

The sauce takes five minutes. The fish takes less. The whole thing, start to table, is done in the time it takes someone else to order a delivery. I wrote it in the notebook years ago: mackerel, gooseberries, June, the kitchen window open. I haven't improved on it since. Some meals arrive fully formed and all you can do is get out of their way.