Fish Pie

Sun 17 June 2007

Until I came to England I'd never had fish pie, and I have to confess I am quite a convert. This month's Australian Gourmet Traveller is, of course, a winter edition - so full of warming, slow cooked comfort food. While we're not sure whether it's summer or winter here in West Yorkshire I didn't fancy having the oven on for hours on end and so ended up sampling the snapper (we substituted coley, a general purpose, cheap, white fish, which is also OK to eat), fennel and potato pot pie.

It does take a while to put together but is fine to assemble in advance (if you're aiming for pretty you may wish to do the potato topping just before you pop it into the oven, as otherwise the potatoes will brown a little). The original recipe is for 6 and I approximately halved it for the two of us.

Take 175mL of milk and bring to the boil with 175mL of vegetable or fish stock then remove from the heat and keep warm.

Melt some butter in a saucepan and add a couple of sliced shallots, a bulb of fennel, sliced and a couple of cloves of garlic, minced. Cook until the vegetables are soft. Add a couple of tablespoons of plain flour and cook out for a couple of minutes, before slowly adding the warm stock and milk mixture. Stir the mix continuously until smooth. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook until thick.

Remove from heat and add your fish (skinned and cut into 3 cm cubes) and green prawns (headed, tailed, shelled - I cut ours in half too) and mix well. The recipe suggests to add the chopped fennel fronds, but I didn't have any, nor did I have green onion, but I did add in a big pile of chopped dill.

You can now set this aside until you are ready to cook.

Heat the oven to 180C and, using a mandolin, finely slice enough potato to make a topping (we used Jersey Royals and left the skin on). Layer the potato over the top of the pie and brush with butter.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the potatoes are golden and it looks done (the recipe says until the fish is cooked, but I don't know how you'd know that!).

We served with steamed broccoli and carrots, and a bottle of Foxwood Dawn Picked viognier (Hoults, £4.99). As a disclaimer, I shall admit that I don't like viognier, and I set Claire the challenge of picking one I would like. This wasn't it. Very toast and butter on the nose, but a lot of citrus on the palate, with a slightly oily/diesely finish and a hint of lychee. Not one I'll be rushing out to buy again, but maybe fans of the grape will love it.

Addendum: I was to find a viognier that I liked only a couple of days later, which was a Condrieu and came in at just four times the price of the Fox Wood. But more about that later!

tagged with: viognier, fish, potato

Stumble It!

Spiced Mackerel

2 June 2007

Another Olive recipe into the test kitchen: spiced mackerel fillets with potato salad. Another recipe that's really a bit of a non-recipe ...

Buy your mackerel - the fishmonger will fillet it for you and mackerel aren't known for their scales so running your hand over the skin will be enough to ready the fillet for cooking. Do buy a whole fish from a fish monger, as you will be able to pick a nice big fish. We only needed one fish between two of us.

In a mortar and pestle, crush equal quantities of cumin and coriander seeds (for 2 people sharing a fish, it was 1 tsp of each), cayenne pepper (or chilli powder, or chilli flakes) to taste, a dash of tumeric and enough lemon juice to make a paste.

Score the mackerel (on the skin side) and rub the paste all over. Leave to marinate.

While marinating, prepare the potato salad. Boil up some new potatoes until tender. When cooked, drain and to the pot add chopped spring onions, some lemon juice, some olive oil and some parsley. Put the lid on and give it all a good shake together. To serve at room temperature, keep it covered until ready to serve.

To cook the mackerel, grill (and I recommend this rather than frying, which is what we did, because the skin didn't hold together particularly well) - skin side up until done.

Serve with the potato salad. We also served with runner beans in a light tomato, garlic and chillli sauce.
The cumin and coriander flavour works really well with the oily, rich fish and I really enjoyed the simple potato salad. The beans added a bit of colour and, with their chilli flavours, complimented the fish. A quick, simple supper - and one that could be adapted quite easily.

Easy peasy. We served with Señorio de Sarría Viñedo no 5 2005, from Navarra (£7.99 from Hoults). It was a lovely wine - smelt like berries, but quite dry and citrussy on the palate, finishing with a touch of red fruit. It went well with the fish but would also be good as an apéritif.

tagged with: mackerel, potato, fish

Stumble It!