During my brief stint in culinary school, one of the many recipes we made was smoked mackerel pate. The school provided us with entire smoked mackerels so that we could practice filleting round fish — when smoked, the round fish fillets much easier than it would if it were raw, giving us a chance to try to be really precise with our cuts without butchering the fish to pieces.
Every day after school we were allowed to bring home whatever we made during the day and didn’t cook, so after I filleted my mackerel and mixed up my pate, I dutifully packed it up in a Tupperware container. I wasn’t sure how the pate would be received at home. Mackerel is an oily, fishy fish with a really strong flavor. Even though I liked the chopped gherkins (little pickles), capers and flat leaf parsley woven throughout, that’s a lot of punch in a snack.