How to Build a Tin Board

There is a level of effort below cooking and above opening a packet of crisps, and it is where we live most evenings. The tin board. Three tins, two dips, a mountain of toast, and about eleven minutes of actual work.

It begins, as everything here begins, with opening the drawer.

What goes on it

For two as dinner, four as something before dinner.

• Three tins, chosen to disagree with each other: something oily and plain (sardines in olive oil), something sharp (mussels or mackerel in escabeche), something rich (anchovies, or a good bonito)
• A sourdough or country loaf, cut thick
• 200 g cream cheese, at room temperature
• 100 g Greek yoghurt
• 1 lemon
• A small bunch of dill, a small bunch of chives
• 1 tsp smoked paprika or a spoonful of harissa
• Cornichons, olives, a ripe tomato, whatever the fridge is willing to contribute
• Good olive oil, flaky salt, black pepper

The two dips

1. The green one. Beat half the cream cheese with half the yoghurt until loose and smooth. Fold through chopped dill and chives, the zest of half the lemon and a squeeze of its juice. Salt. It should be soft enough to fall off a spoon. If it holds a peak, add yoghurt.
2. The red one. The rest of the cream cheese and yoghurt, beaten with the smoked paprika or harissa and a pinch of salt. Swirl rather than fully combine, so it goes marbled instead of pink.

Put each into its own small dish. We use mini cocottes because they are the correct size and because they are extremely pleasing, which is a legitimate reason to own kitchenware.

Assembly

1. Toast the bread properly, dark at the edges, not pale and sad. Cut into fingers. Make more than you think; you will not have made enough.
2. Open the tins and leave the fish in them. Do not decant. The tin is the serving dish, the oil is the sauce, and half the pleasure is the row of open tins on a board.
3. Put everything on one board with the dishes of dip, the toast, the cornichons and the olives. Slice the tomato thickly and salt it.
4. Olive oil over the fish. Pepper. A wedge of lemon somewhere.
5. Carry it to wherever you are actually going to eat it, which will not be the table.

The rules, such as they are

Three tins, not one. One tin is a snack. Three tins is a spread, and it lets people find their favourite, which they will announce loudly and then defend.

Make them argue. Oily, sharp, rich. If all three are sardines in olive oil you have made the same bite three times. The contrast is the menu.

The dip is structural. It is not a garnish. A good tinned fish on dry toast is a bit austere; the same fish on something cool and creamy is a completely different mouthful. It is the difference between a board people pick at and a board people demolish.

Warm toast, cold fish, cold dip. The temperature contrast is doing more work than any single ingredient.

Leave the oil. Let it pool. Tear the toast through it. This is the correct behaviour.

Nobody has ever sat down to one of these and said "you did not cook." They say "where did you get these tins." Which is, conveniently, the entire business plan.