Fish Pie

INGREDIENTS:

We cheated. We used a recipe, almost exactly. I am in love with Jamie Oliver's notions of cooking. This is not original, though we made alterations.

But god, look at it.

Jamie's glorious fish pie recipe is here.

We made a few changes, of course.

1) Add leeks with the onion and carrot. Please add leeks. A big one, or two little ones. They're fan-bloody-tastic.
2) You don't really need that much heavy cream. By all means, use it if you like. But you can also sub milk (I think all we had was milk), or just reduce the amount. Trust me, with the cheddar, it's already very rich and creamy.
3) We de-glazed the onion and carrot saute with 1/2 cup of white wine. It was DELICIOUS.
4) We threw in raw shrimp, cleaned, tails off, halved lengthwise, with the raw fish.
5) The eggs are probably stellar, but we skipped them.
6) Open a bottle of Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale.
7) Enjoy together.

THE BEER:

Classic British brews are endlessly satisfying. They're balanced with the benefit of hundreds of years of expertise, and--while you can probably drink any beer with a fish pie--this one is a particularly nice choice. According to my eminently reliable sources (the generous strangers who have nothing better to do than to improve Wikipedia):

"The Old Brewery at Tadcaster was founded in 1758 and bears the name of famous local brewer Samuel Smith. It is both the oldest brewery in Yorkshire and the only surviving independent brewery in Tadcaster."

Try to think of a cooler name than Tadcaster. You'll find you can't.

Now, go get knocked up and name your infant child Tadcaster. Girl or boy, it won't matter. In either case, he or she will be welcomed as a liberator if not hailed as a god.

This beer tastes like drinking a pecan pie, in a good way. In a BEER way. It's so rich, so toasty, so malty, so balanced, so butterscotch and milk chocolate and almonds and dark fruit and warm earth, without ever being literally sweet, you want another one right away. Along with another scoop of fish pie.

THE SONG:

Gabe and I both remember snatches of this song from our childhood. I went ahead and looked it up for this post, and was shocked to discover that it was actually released the year I was born (1980, kiddos). I admit freely, very little time passed as we assembled this recipe when we were NOT singing this song by Barnes and Barnes (you'll notice that the chorus is repeated frequently--because we couldn't recall the real words, that's pretty much all we sang):

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

In the morning, laughing happy fish heads
In the evening, floating in the soup

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

Ask a fish head anything you want to
They won't answer, they cant talk

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

I took a fish head out to see a movie,
Didn't have to pay to get it in

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

They can't play baseball, they don't wear sweaters
They're not good dancers, they don't play drums

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

Eat your fish pie. The end.