Done up like a kipper...

Spent the day in Whitby scoffing Hadleys fish and chips and generally mooching around, taking our pilgrimage up Henrietta Street to buy the famous oak smoked kippers from Fortunes Smokehouse. I'm pleased to report that it was still there despite some concerns about the landslide behind the premises which threatened to swamp their yards with the bones of the dead from St. Mary's and mud and slurry. In the end nothing much happened. So the best kippers south of Craster and east of the Isle of Man are still available!

It didn't make a lot of national news because the body count wasn't expected to be great and anyway all the national TV crews were waiting for another landslide to sweep away a street of cottages about a mile away.

Kippers are smoked herrings. Large north-east Atlantic herring gutted and soaked in a brine solution then taken to the smokehouse, where they are hung on black tarry rods to be cured over a series of fires made from a mixture of oak, beech and softwood, the fragrant oak and beech smoke gently permeates the fish to add flavour.

It is only after the smoking process has been completed that a herring can finally be called a kipper.

So there.