Craster kippers

Well sell loads of these at work when the weekend starts looming and the people who buy them absolutely rave about how good they taste.  They're oak smoked in Craster, Northumberland.  We have The Woo's dad over for supper and staying the night so we decided to try them this evening.  I picked up three lovely looking specimens after I finished today and we're going to have them with some decent bread and butter with a homemade apple and blackberry crumble and custard to follow.

Kippers can be cooked in loads of different ways.  Usually I would simmer mine in water for about 4 - 5 minutes but as there are three of them of a good size and I haven't got a massive enough pan to do them all at once I'm going to lay them in a little hot water in a baking tray, add a little butter and bake them in a 180* oven for around the same sort of time.

The Woo rustled up the crumble.  Three Bramley apples were peeled and chopped up then cooked down in a pan.  A bowlful of blackberries gathered by me on a dog walk yesterday were added to the hot apple and about a table spoon of sugar was stirred in.  She used caster sugar but more or less anything will do.  Her crumble mix is a failsafe handed down from her lovely mum.  Half fat, in this case unsalted butter, to plain flour and then the same amount of sugar to fat.  In this case that's 8oz of flour, 4oz of butter and 4oz of sugar.  This was all rubbed together until lump free and then poured on top of the apple and blackberry mix.  This will be cooked in a 180* oven for about 25/30 minutes until the crumble is golden brown.

I'm writing this in advance of the cooking as I'm knackered today after three early starts at work and a 4.30am alarm call tomorrow so I'm going to cook, eat and chillax!

Ciao for now!