Smoked mackerel pate with baby yorkshire puddings

1 Preheat the oven to 240°C. Now make the pâté. Trim and finely slice the spring onions. Grate the zest of one of your lemons. Mix together the onion, lemon zest, horseradish and cream cheese. Flake and roughly chop the mackerel, discarding the skin if you like. Add it to the cream cheese mixture along with the juice of the zested lemon. Season with salt and pepper. Cover the pâté and refrigerate.

2 Now make the Yorkies. Pour the sunflower oil into your mini muffin pans. The oil should cover the bases of the muffin holes, about ½ t per hole. Place the pans into the hot oven, on the top shelf.

3 Whizz up the eggs, flour, milk and salt. There should be no lumps. Put the batter into a jug. The batter will benefit from a short “rest”, so there’s no need to rush. Check the oiled muffin pans. After 15 minutes or so the oil should be so hot it has started to smoke. At this point, very carefully remove the pans from the oven. Pour the batter confidently into each hole, almost to the top.

4 Return the trays to the oven. Check the time. The Yorkies should be done in about 20 minutes. Don’t open the oven to check them, they might flop. Remove only once the puddings have risen magnificently and are a good golden brown.

5 Serve the hot Yorkies with the cold pâté, lemon quarters and micro leaves.

Cook's note: Yorkshire pudding. Just saying it makes me happy. This is an inspired departure from the usual way of serving Yorkshire pudding: that is, with a red meat roast and gravy. Here, the Yorkshire pudding plays the part of warm bread, or toast to go with the pâté. Trouble is, the understudy plays the part better than the lead. The baby Yorkies have a hollow in the middle that begs to be filled with the cold, sharp-tasting pâté. The pate starts to melt, the horseradish and smoky, fishy tastes are accentuated. A squeeze of lemon guarantees the standing ovation.

*This recipe appears in STAR FISH by Daisy Jones. Reproduced with permission from Quivertree.