Fish pie is our favorite comfort food. Each swollen mouthful is about repetition of flavour and texture: it soothes the tongue without surprises. The ingredients, fleshy chunks of cod, smoky flakes of haddock, fat prawns and sticky‑yolked eggs, are wrapped in a white blanket of parsley sauce, then tucked up under a duvet of bland pale mash.Don't be tempted to get over adventurous and cheffy. Mussels, squid and saffron are too clever by half; we think that scallops are about as fancy as a fish pie should get. Go to a good fishmonger for your white fish, and if you're buying smoked haddock, look for fillets that have been coloured by smoking rather than by yellow dye. And avoid those bags of tiny, anaemic‑looking, frozen peeled prawns because they'll turn your pie watery.
