Pike with Beurre Blanc

Pike are glorious creatures, sinister, streamlined, fierce, cunning. The way they loiter in thick venusian weeds on the qui vive for prey is something to behold. Those from sluggish streams and flatland canals are not worth eating. They can never be wholly purged of the taint of silt and sump, never absolved of being bottom feeders. Pike from a chalk stream are a different matter.

My father’s characterisation of pike as ‘hot cotton wool with needles in it’ was born out of exp