Other Kinds of Smoked Fish

The 1980s saw various entrepreneurial types trying to foist smoked tuna on an unsuspecting world. It was touted as being better than smoked salmon, but it wasn’t. I’m not even certain it was edible. Halibut can be rather nice hot-smoked as can monkfish, sturgeon and whiting. If you can find a good source of these, they do make a pleasant change. The less said about smoked shellfish the better: how anyone came to the conclusion that smoking an oyster was a rational thing to do is unfathomable. But smoked eel can be the most delicious, if expensive, treat: serve it with horseradish cream, and always buy it on the bone. Opposite, I give a recipe for a salad of smoked eel, crispy bacon and curly endive with a horseradish dressing.