Smoked haddock fishcakes

I made this because there were some leftover vegetables from Sunday lunch and I was loath to throw them away – four pieces of roast potatoes, 1 small roast carrot and 1 piece of parsnip. And since there was some smoked haddock in the freezer, fishcakes seemed the easiest thing to make. It looks like there’s a lot in the ingredient list, but really the spicing is minimal (given what I’m used to, anyway). Pete and his mum both said the flavours were clean, the spicing didn’t mask the flavour of the fish or the potatoes. Which I guess is the point.

I used semolina for a crunchy exterior, but if you want to use Japanese panko breadcrumbs or maybe even cornmeal, feel free.

I served the fishcakes with sweet chilli sauce as a dip and a green salad on the side.

Fish pie

Four steps. That’s all it takes. (Apart from the sub-steps for each of the four steps..;. but that’s all, honest. And at the end of those few steps and sub-steps, you get this gently spiced pie with a crisp cheesy mashed potato topping. You can use whatever fish you like in this, I guess. I bought a fish pie mix from the supermarket, so there were two-inch pieces of salmon, cod and smoked haddock.

If you’ve read the recipe and you’re wondering why I didn’t add salt to the mashed potato or to the white sauce, it’s because I found out the hard way that salt water fish are salty in themselves, unlike fresh water fish. I’ve come close to making a fish dish inedible because I added salt… so I’m now a little less ignorant and passing on my wisdom (!) to you.

I don’t have anything else to say on this topic, so shall we move on to the recipe? Yep… I thought you’d want that.

Recipe for: Fish Pie

Smoked haddock and fennel pie

I’m always on the lookout for fish dishes for Pete that seem easy to make, and The Guardian and The Telegraph are my favourite places to scout for them. I adore Wednesdays and Thursdays in The Guardian (because of Angela Hartnett on Wednesdays and Felicity Cloake on Thursdays), and Stevie Parle in The Telegraph (although I’m not as certain about when the recipes appear in the newspaper). I read all the recipes, doable and otherwise, and print off a good few of them. However, my record with making them isn’t as good as my record with printing them, and definitely nowhere near as good as my record at reading them. I suppose I consider myself up on the deal if I manage to make one recipe for every dozen printed off. This was one of those that made it from newspaper to printout to plate.

Portuguese caldo verde (green soup)

This is a modified recipe from The Hairy Bikers, and no doubt they modified the original caldo verde recipe for their version, making my version probably not quite authentic Portuguese.

I chose to start with this recipe because it was really easy to make and didn’t require any fancy ingredients apart from the chorizo sausage. So go ahead, try it out.