Smoke on the water

A fish smokehouse isn’t the obvious environment for a girl who likes a bit of glamour.

But Vicky Dixon, who runs the smokehouse at Whitby Seafish, in Staithes, is defiant. Below the neck, she may have to put up with an unflattering outfit of shapeless white dinner-lady-style overall and clumpy, distinctly un-Glastonbury-like green wellies. But there’s also not a strand of her honey blonde hair out of place and when I remark on her immaculate make-up, it results in a 
giggle that would make Barbara Windsor blush.

“I’ve actually toned it down a bit today,” she laughs. “I usually come into work with full-on Amy Winehouse eyeliner. You can take the girl out of Warrington, but you can’t take Warrington out of the girl.”

It’s safe to say that Vicky’s a bit of exotica in the chilly fish sheds and cough-inducing environment of the fish smokery. And it’s certainly not where she intended to end up – she grew up on the other side of the Pennines and when she left school started her career as an administration officer in the prison service.

However, life has a funny way of not turning out as planned and seven years after leaving Warrington, she’s possibly the only female fish smoker working commercially in the country – she’s come across no others, and a rather plaintive appeal via Twitter asking for any other ‘girlie’ smokers to come forward and compare notes resulted only in a 
message from someone who does the odd bit of home smoking in a tin in her back garden.

Landing in Staithes was down to serendipity – the result of the proverbial pin stuck in a map.

“I was fed up of working at the prison, and wanted to get away from Warrington,” she says. “I sat down with my then boyfriend, and my sister, and we just looked at a map, and thought Middlesbrough might be a good place to go to get work. But we ended up driving into Staithes, saw a house for rent, and grabbed it. Then a job came up for a temp at the fish factory, and I got it – and seven years later, I’m still here.”

It helped that not long after her arrival, Vicky got together with the smokehouse’s owner, Matthew Asquith – the pair are still a couple.

“Not the most romantic of starts – love blossoming over a dill of fish,” she says, explaining that a ‘dill’ is the sink surrounded by wooden drainers that’s used in the gutting process.

Matthew had to train Vicky to fillet fish ‘at dead of night, under cover of darkness’, she says. “It just wasn’t seen as a job for a woman – too skilled.” And it’s always been so, she adds – those sepia pictures of herring girls that we all get nostalgic about don’t reveal the truth that women were given only the most backbreaking and menial of jobs – picking bait, and gutting the catch. The more skilled work of filleting was reserved for the men.

It was a similar story when Vicky learned to smoke fish – her apprenticeship consisted of much covert observation, and hours spent on the internet.

Matthew had run Whitby Seafish since he bought it 13 years ago, but until recently, it was just a wet fish operation. Then, three years ago, the couple invested in the kit needed to set up a smokehouse, and have quickly gone from strength to strength – last November, their oak smoked salmon won Best Fish and Seafood Product of the Year in the deliciouslyorkshire annual awards; their oak roasted salmon was shortlisted in the same category.

“And then I forgot to enter for this year’s awards,” says Vicky, with that laugh again. “We were so busy, and I suddenly realised about two days after the deadline.”

Not that it seems to have affected business. With the exception of the salmon, which is bought in from Scotland, and the herring for the kippers, which comes from Norway (no one’s fishing for herring off this coast any more), Matthew buys all of his fish locally at Whitby fish market, and the company’s trade business for both fresh and smoked is all within about a 10-mile radius – Matthew reckons the Mallyan Spout Hotel at Goathland is the furthest afield they supply.

But within that small area, they supply some big hitters, including, in Whitby, Green’s Restaurant and Bistro, run by acclaimed seafood chef Rob Green, local institution The Dolphin Hotel, and the world famous Magpie Café and its online outlet Whitby Catch; and foodie destination the Fox and Hounds in Goldsborough, just north of Sandsend.

And on the day the Yorkshire Post visits, a couple from Thirsk have turned up, freezer bag in hand, to stock up on a stack of fish – and a couple of lobsters – from the tiny retail outlet at the front of the plant. Mary and Ian Guest tell me they make the trip to Staithes around once every three months, and when I ask them why they travel so far just to buy fish, they answer simply: “Because it’s so good.”

There’s plenty to choose from. What’s on offer depends on what’s been landed that morning, but today the fresh wet fish includes John Dory, gurnard, langoustines, dressed crab, hake, coley, pollock, lemon sole and plaice. Smoked offerings include salmon (both smoked and roast smoked), kippers, haddock and – somewhat off-menu – cheese and garlic. Matthew is also boiling a large tub of mussels ready for smoking.

Vicky explains the process: the three long stainless steel cabinets each comprise a set of three smoke boxes – essentially, heat-proof drawers – on the left.

The main body of the cabinet contains a set of racks on which the fish fillets are placed – each cabinet can hold up to 56 sides of salmon. To the far right, there’s a flue.

The drawers are filled with a layer of pine shavings, which is dampened down and topped with a second layer, also dampened; finally, oak dust is added for flavour, and again dampened.

The shavings are lit, and carefully nurtured to a smoulder, and the resulting smoke is drawn over the fish by the flue and penetrates its flesh. Cold smoking is best: any higher than 15ºC, and a film forms on the surface of the fillets, preventing the fish from absorbing the delicious smoky flavour.

Kippers can take from four to six hours; a large side of salmon, anything up to 12 hours or more.

The oak roast and smoked salmon is even more laborious – it has to stay in the smoking cabinet at 60C for a good ten hours, and then the heat is increased and each fillet regularly checked with a temperature probe until its core temperature is a steady 75C. “It’s a matter of getting the balance right, and making sure it tastes good,” says Vicky. The plant is icy cold in the winter, and roasting hot in the summer – on particularly warm days, Vicky often starts work at 4am and finishes at midday to avoid the heat. And her hands bear testament to the toughness of the work – they’re either stained mahogany brown by the oak chippings, or they’re red raw from her scrubbing to get rid of the stain, or from the cold. “I tend to get a lot of hand cream at Christmas and this year has been no different,” she says.