07.23.08
Kippers
Just around the corner from The House of Manannan is Moore’s Kipper House and Devereau and Son. Both places specialize in kippers, smoked herring. Here’s where the Filipino in me comes out. I love kippers. Maybe it’s because Filipinos also like smoked and dried fish, which is a traditional breakfast fare. So while at the Isle of Man, I had kippers almost every day for breakfast along with some homemade bread and a nice hot cup of tea. I miss that because I haven’t been able to locate a place that sells nice kippers locally, and ever since the 9/11 Twin Tower incident, Moore’s and Devereau are not able to ship to the U.S. Grrrrr. I’ll have to find a way to get my fix, but in the meantime, here’s a few pics from the free tour that was offered at Moore’s Kipper House.
I don’t know why I didn’t think to take a pic of the outside of Moore’s, but I was able to pick up a shot from their website of the outside. It’s a tiny shot, but that’s basically what it looks like in person. They offered one tour at 3PM every day.
The building is two stories. The tour starts on the bottom floor where the herring are first brought in and filleted. The herrings are passed into the room through those windows behind the machines.
Those two machines are used to fillet the herring. If my memory serves me correctly, the steel table on the right side of the pic is used to salt the herring once they’ve been filleted and cleaned. Below is a pic of the other side of the filleting machine.
Off to the right of these machines is the bottom portion of the smoking house. There were several red doors lined up next to each other, which opened to the bottom of the smoke stacks and where the fire was kept burning while smoking.
There was one that was in the process of smoking salmon, so our guide opened the door for us to see what it looked like inside.
Naturally since that one was very hot, we couldn’t go inside to look up at the fish being smoked. So we were shown the inside of one of the smokers that wasn’t currently in use. This shot is looking up at the planks that would carry the fish during smoking.
Those planks above are accessed from the second floor. A man loads up the planks with herring as he balances on another plank. So care is needed that he doesn’t fall below as he works. Once these smokers are loaded and in operation, it gets pretty smoky inside, so the guys checking in on the fish need to know what they’re doing as they go in and check up on the fish. Don’t want them mis-stepping and falling down a level and ending up in the smoking fire below. The doors on the upper level look just like the red doors on the bottom level except when these doors are opened, this is where the fish are hanging. The cart rack off to the left is where the kippers are placed after they are smoked and left to cool a bit before packing.
In case it’s hard to imagine how the fish are hanged during smoking, I lifted off another small pic from Moore’s Kippers website at what they look like.
And here’s what the kippers look like when they’re cooked and ready to eat!
Now I know I’ve been going on about kippers, but Moores and Devereau also carry other seafoods such as crab meats, other fishes, and queenies. I honestly wasn’t familiar with what queenies were, but I found that they are scallops. During our visit, Brian and I also picked up some of their smoked bacon. Oh la la! That was good, too!
Okay, better dash for now.
Marlakins
