I grew up all over. I was born in Manchester but we lived in Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire, Northern Ireland – there were many childhood homes. The idyllic one was the last of these, a large house on a 10-acre plot of land, eight miles north of Belfast. I was four when we moved in and we stayed there for five years.

It was an odd house – it looked much smaller from the drive than it actually was. It wasn’t a mansion or a stately home, but it was a gentleman’s residence, and to me it seemed huge.

It was another world back then. I was only six but I would walk alone across the river to school. And children were let off school early in the summer to make hay.

I had three siblings, two of whom were older than me. We were reasonably close, but I was fairly solitary. I liked reading, and collecting things. I remember our rumpus room: it had been the kitchen, with large flagstones and a boiler, but otherwise was quite empty. We spent a lot of time playing in there, but mostly we played outside. It was Northern Ireland, so it was fairly wet, but I don’t remember it raining. The garden was huge, there were streams and fields. We were always building huts and playing on the swing over the river. We never went on holiday. We just played.

My mother was an enthusiastic, somewhat unconventional cook. My father needed – expected – a proper meal, three times a day. His mother was supposed to have been an exceptional Lancashire cook, and my mum had to survive under that shadow. So she never tried to do the conventionalEnglish things, but she did make fairly straightforward meals: scrag end of mutton with pearl barley at least once a week, lamb’s liver, herrings in oatmeal … As a treat we’d have pheasant with bread sauce and bacon, with brussels sprouts on the side. We probably had fish on Fridays, a hangover from my mother’s Catholic upbringing.

Her fish pie was a family favourite. She used a mixture of fresh and smoked fish – not smoked salmon, because that was rather special, but cod, or haddock, which was always bright yellow in those days. And fresh cod too, which was the cheapest available. She always put hardboiled eggs in it, and – unconventionally – sliced tomatoes, then plenty of white sauce and mashed potato on top. When I was working in Hong Kong a few years ago, I put a fish pie on the menu, and it was the one thing that everyone loved, Chinese and expats both. I didn’t put any sliced tomatoes in it, and I rather regret that now.

A luxurious fish pie

The tomatoes are a personal idiosyncrasy – discard at your pleasure. If using, it is worth drying them out so that they don’t make the pie watery.

Serves 6
For the sauce
50g butter
40g plain flour
500ml milk
500g white fish bones (a cod head is ideal)
½ onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves
1 bay leaf
10 black peppercorns
125ml double cream

For the pie
3 tomatoes
750g potatoes
100ml milk
50g butter
2 egg yolks
200g salmon fillet
200g smoked haddock
200g cod or pollock
6 scallops
12 large raw prawns
6 eggs, hardboiled and quartered
2 tbsp chopped parsley

1 Melt the butter in a large saucepan, add the flour and cook to a sandy roux for a minute. Add a little of the milk to make a smooth paste before adding the remainder, whisking well as it comes to the boil. Add all the remaining ingredients except the cream. Cook for 40 minutes on an extremely gentle heat. Add the cream and then pass immediately through a fine sieve.

2 Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water, refresh in cold water and peel. Cut into thick slices. Lay on kitchen paper with a good sprinkle of salt for 30 minutes.

3 Peel and cut the potatoes into smallish chunks. Cover with cold water with a teaspoon of salt. Bring to the boil, cook and pass through a mouli food mill. Put back on the stove, add milk and butter. Take off the heat, and beat in the egg yolks.

4 Cut the fish into bite-size chunks. Season and mix with the scallops, prawns, quartered eggs, parsley and sauce. Lay the tomatoes across the top. Top the pie with the mashed potato, a spatula and a fork to produce little hillocks will suffice. Bake at 180C/350F/gas mark 4 for 30 minutes. Serve with a green salad.

• Rowley Leigh is a chef, restaurateur and journalist. He is the first chef in residence, until the end of January, at Parabola, at the new Design Museum in London.