A customer very kindly sent in this traditional recipe from Hessle Road, an area once associated with Hull’s former booming fishing industry.
The tomato gravy that makes this recipe unique is a mixture of chopped tomatoes and black tea. The black tea sounds strange but it works very well with the smokiness of the haddock.
It is believed that the addition of tea to the chopped tomatoes originates from the trawlers. On longer journeys food would be scarce and they would survive on the cheaper fish they caught. Mixing black tea with the chopped tomatoes gave the wet fish a taste of the smoked haddock they longed for and could only eat onshore. Continue reading