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Findon Haddocks, Grilled
Rub the gridiron with a small piece of suet, and brush the haddock over with a little melted butter. Grill it in front of or over a clear fire for four or five minutes on each side. Put it on a hot dish, spread a piece of butter over it, and serve at once.
A three-line method that assumes you already know what a Findon haddock is: a split, cold-smoked haddock, cured but raw, that grilling both cooks and finishes. Everything here depends on the fish itself.
- Finnan haddieA Findon (or Finnan) haddock is a haddock split down the backbone, brined and cold-smoked, so it is still raw in the middle. Buy an undyed side or whole split fish if you can; the fluorescent yellow ones are usually dyed and often only lightly smoked.
- The gridironA ridged cast-iron grill pan over high heat, or an overhead broiler, both work. The suet rub is only there to keep the fish from sticking to bare iron -- oil or clarified butter does the same job.
- Skin side first, and longestLay the fish skin down and give it the greater share of the time; the flesh side needs no more than a minute or two under a hot broiler. Four to five minutes a side suits a whole thick split fish at a fire, but a supermarket fillet will be dry at that.
- DonenessThe flesh turns from translucent amber to opaque and flakes at the thick shoulder. Smoked haddock overcooks quickly and goes fibrous, so pull it the moment it parts.
- SaltThe cure carries the seasoning. Add none, and taste before you salt anything served alongside.
- The butter mattersThe final knob melting into the hot fish is the sauce -- there is no other. Use good butter and put it on at the table so it is still running when the plate arrives.
- Yield and servingOne whole split haddock feeds two, a large fillet one. Traditional accompaniments are a poached egg set on top, plain boiled potatoes, and brown bread; it was as often a breakfast or high-tea dish as a dinner one.
Findon is a fishing village on the Kincardineshire coast just south of Aberdeen, and the smoked haddock named for it is generally traced there -- cold-smoked over peat and hardwood, and established well enough by the early nineteenth century to be sold under the village's name in Edinburgh and, once the railways reached the north-east, in London. The contracted form "finnan haddie" is usually explained as the Scots pronunciation of Findon, though an origin in Findhorn in Moray has also long been claimed. The recipe is plain because it could afford to be: the smokehouse had already done the seasoning and the preserving, and the cook's only task was to apply heat and butter without ruining either.