I Like Pie

Tarts with Tops on: How to Make the Perfect Pie by Tamasin Day-Lewis is a lovely new cookbook. It's filled with all sorts of savoury pies, apple pies, American pies and other traditional kinds of pies from around the UK. It's impossible to read this cookbook without getting hungry as well as a little amused at the colourful selection of words in the recipes themselves. Hearty winter comfort food with ingredients easily found even here in Helsinki.

Cod, Smoked Haddock and Scallop Pie

Ingredients

• 1kg/2.25lb cod or unsmoked haddock, skinned and filleted
• 225g/8oz or so natural smoked haddock
• 8 or 9 scallops with large commas of coral, cleaned and the white discs sliced in two, the corals left whole or sliced if large enough.
• 290-425ml/10-15fl oz milk
• 55g/2oz unsalted butter
• 30g/1oz plain flour
• 1 bay leaf
• nutmeg
• a large glass of white whine or better still vermouth
• the white part of three leeks, cleaned and cut into rings
• 1kg/2.25lb potatoes, peeled, cooked and mashed with butter and milk
• handful of fresh dill, chopped
• sea salt and black pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Put the unsmoked piece of fish in a gratin dish, pour over the milk and cook in the oven for 15 minutes. It may not be cooked right through when you remove it, but that doesn't matter.
3. Remove any bones and flake the fish in large chunks into the gratin dish you're going to cook it in, reserving the poaching milk.
4. Meanwhile, cover the smoked haddock in boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain the water off and flake the haddock into the gratin dish.
5. Make a roux with the butter and flour, then add the hot poaching milk, bay leaf and a suspicion of grated nutmeg and whisk into a smooth sauce. Add the wine or vermouth, cooking it down for at least 10 minutes. Season well with black pepper, but go easy on the salt as smoked fish carries a lot of it.
6. Steam the leeks until tender and add them to the fish.
7. Put the raw scallops and the coral in with the fish, then strew the handful of dill into the sauce and pour it over the fish.
8. Cover with mashed potato, ruffle the top with a fork and dot with butter.

Place on a baking tray and consign to the heat for about 30 minutes. The sauce often erupts through the potato like a geyser and courses down the sides, which is part of the charm of the finished offering. One of the few dishes that really should be brought to the table nuclear hot. Serves 6.