COMFORTING FOOD FIT FOR THE TOP TABLE.

Byline: bryan webb

FOLLOWING on from last week, as there has been no let up to the wind and the rain, I'm sticking with comfort food. We all love and crave it - no matter how many fancy meals we might cook, comfort food's what we want.

I normally crave a simple roast chicken after a few days away, while a good steak and kidney pie would be at the top of my list during these dark nights.

Every time Susan and I take the long drive up to Perth in Scotland, Jeremy, an ex-second chef of mine, has a hearty fish pie and a few bottles of crisp white wine ready to greet us after the gruelling sixhour trip.

Fish pie has a place in the heart of almost everybody. No fancy flavours here, just a creamy sauce with chunks of familiar white fish under a crusted surface of nicely browned mashed potato. Well, that's how a good one should be.

However, the reason why it's not so popular in restaurants is that it often fails to live up to our rose-tinted memories. Too many school versions, invariably made with meagre quantities of inferior fish in a thin, watery sauce with hard, dry, lumpy potato have put countless people off fish pie for life.

What it should be is a handsome, generous dish, shopped for particularly and cooked with attention to detail, as was one wonderful fish pie made for me by one of our guests, Michelle Davis, at her home for a recent dinner party, Even if I class a fish pie a comfort food, made well it fits any occasion.

This might seem an obvious thing to say and of course, it applies to all cooking, but in the case of poor old fish pie it is too often thought of as a lowly dish and just gets, how shall we say, chucked together.

The best fish to use is cod, pollock or haddock, even a mix of fresh and unsmoked haddock with a few prawns or scallops for texture and flavour.

There must be no bones - these will ruin the most carefully made fish pie - and the bchamel sauce must be well cooked to avoid a floury taste.

Of course, it's down to you what fish to put in, but avoid oily fish, shop carefully and enjoy.

. Bryan Webb is owner/chef of Tyddyn Llan, Llandrillo, near Corwen FISH PIE (for 4) ingredients350g cooked whole prawns in the shell700ml milk 1 medium onion, chopped 1 bay leaf salt400g cod fillet 400g salmon fillet 400g smoked haddock handful of picked flat parsley leaves 75g cooked frozen peas 75g butter 75g flourwhite pepper for the mash: 1.5 kilo of floury potatoes, peeled, 25ml milk, 100g butter method. Remove shells from the prawns and place the shells in the milk with the onion, bay leaf and a pinch of salt.

Bring to the boil, then turn off heat and leave to infuse for 20 minutes. Lay the fish skin side down in an oven proof dish or tray, strain the milk over the fish and simmer for 5 minutes until just lightly cooked. Lift the fish onto a plate and leave to cool.

When you can handle the fish remove from the shin in chunks and check that there are no bones, place into a large bowl with the peeled prawns, peas and chopped parsley. Strain the milk. To make the sauce, melt the butter in a small pan, add the flour and cook through on a low flame.

Now slowly add the fishy milk to create a smooth thick sauce, simmer very gently, stirring to make sure it does not stick on the bottom. Season with salt and pepper, and if it's too thick add some fresh milk. Pour the sauce over the fish and carefully mix together, transfer to a pie dish and leave to cool in the fridge so that when you add the potato it doesn't sink to the bottom into a sloppy mixture. Preheat the oven to 180C. Boil the potatoes in salted water, drain well and mash with the butter and milk. When the fish mix is firm spoon the mash over, decorating with a fork if you wish, and bake in the oven for 30 minutes until it's nicely crusted and golden