Finnan Haddie

By John, 13 October, 2015
Region
Scotland
Description

Finnan HaddieOne of our favorite breakfast or lunch dishes on a cold rainy day is this old Scottish favorite made from smoked haddock in a white sauce, with the white sauce made from milk in which the fish was cooked.

Finnan haddie is smoked haddock. You can sometimes find it frozen at your fishmonger. That's OK - Finnan haddie is said to have been invented by a penurious Scot who wanted to salvage a load of haddock damaged by smoke in a warehouse fire. Rather than let it be discarded, he claimed it was the Irish ("Fennian" or "Finnan") style and sold it for food. So this recipe was never developed to use the purest, freshest, local ingredients - it came from a salvage operation!

Finnan Haddie can be a tricky dish. In general, people that like it the way they like it (follow that?) and any deviation is simply wrong. For example, one of our favorite restaurants used to make it one way, and Lorna loved it. Then the new chef changed the recipe and she won't eat it any more. It wasn't a big change - he didn't add pickles or substitute mussels for haddock - he just makes it thinner.

So this recipe is for a thicker version. It's easy to thin it by adding milk or cream, but it's a little more work to thicken it up again.

Yield
2 Servings
Preparation time
30 minutes
Ingredients
1 lb Finnan Haddie (I get it frozen at Wood's)
1 c Milk
1 Bay Leaf
2 T Butter (Unsalted)
2 T Flour
3 Eggs (Hard-boiled and shelled)
1 Parsley, Curly (small bunch for garnish)
Instructions
  1. Chop the finnan haddie into 1-inch squares.
  2. Poach the finnan haddie with the bay leaf in the milk. When the milk comes to a boil, reduce the heat and let it simmer.
  3. Make a roux with the flour and butter. Cook it a moment until it just starts to color, to shed the floury taste.
  4. Strain the fish-poaching milk into a cup, and use that to make the white sauce. It will be double thick - thin as needed with more milk.
  5. Slice the hard-boiled eggs in an egg slicer, then chop two of them finely. Stir the chopped eggs into the sauce and use the other for a garnish.
  6. Flake the poached fish into the sauce, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve hot with toast points or steamed new potatoes.
Notes

This is also nice with crepes! A white sauce with chopped hard-cooked eggs in it is a Yankee egg sauce, often served with poached fish.