About Me

Most of my cooking as an adult involved opening a jar of ‘chicken tonight’ or ‘ragu’ and my most adventurous meal would be a roast chicken. Cooking was never something I enjoyed, it was something that needed to be done to feed the family. That is until I met Rob. I got lucky with that one as he loved cooking and was fabulous at it. Fantastic, I would never have to ‘cook’ again……. Or so I thought!!! Being with Rob and seeing what he could throw together and still make taste fab triggered something in me to give it a go. He also had a good range of celebrity chef cook books which seemed to get added to every Christmas, and his love of watching cookery programmes seemed to rub off on me. So I have decided to try and work my way through the hundreds of recipes we have and to be a little more adventurous with food rather than sticking to the handful of recipes I know and trust.And at the same time try to make my meals go further. Blogging seemed the ideal way to record my efforts and review the recipes.

Friday, 21 January 2011

Fish on Friday

I  must confess that this isn't the first time I have used this recipe but each time I make it,I love it and wanted to share on here.


Fish Pie


serves 4-6


Ingredients


 sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
 1kg potatoes
 1 carrot 
 2 sticks of celery
 150g good Cheddar cheese
 1 lemon
 ½ a fresh red chilli
 4 sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley 
 300g salmon fillets, skin off and bones removed
 300g undyed smoked haddock fillets, skin off and bones removed
 125g king prawns, raw, peeled
 olive oil
 optional: a good handful of spinach, chopped
 optional: a couple of ripe tomatoes, quartered



To prepare your fish pie
 Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6 and bring a large pan of salted water to the boil
 Peel the potatoes and cut into 2cm chunks
 Once the water is boiling, add your potatoes and cook for around 12 minutes, until soft (you can stick your knife into them to check)
 Meanwhile, get yourself a deep baking tray or earthenware dish and stand a box grater in it
 Peel the carrot
 Grate the celery, carrot and Cheddar on the coarse side of the grater
 Use the fine side of the grater to grate the zest from the lemon
 Finely grate or chop your chilli
 Finely chop the parsley leaves and stalks and add these to the tray

 Cut the salmon and smoked haddock into bite-size chunks and add to the tray with the prawns
 Squeeze over the juice from the zested lemon (no pips please!), drizzle with olive oil and add a good pinch of salt and pepper
 If you want to add any spinach or tomatoes, do it now
 Mix everything together really well




 By now your potatoes should be cooked, so drain them in a colander and return them to the pan
 Drizzle with a couple of good lugs of olive oil and add a pinch of salt and pepper
 Mash until nice and smooth, then spread evenly over the top of the fish and grated veg 

 Place in the preheated oven for around 40 minutes, or until cooked through, crispy and golden on top
 Serve piping hot with tomato ketchup, baked beans, steamed veg or a lovely green salad





Now if your expecting a traditional style fish pie with lots of sauce then you couldn't be more wrong.
But what you do get is a very easy delicious pie . You may have heard chefs talking about different flavours with each mouthful and think 'yeah yeah' but I could definately say that with this pie, especially with the chilli,lemon and cheese.
It really was easy and everything thrown together. The 1st time I made this I followed the recipe exactly however we all found the taste of salmon over powering so I've used just plain white fish since, but I guess this is just down to personal taste. I also added some sweetcorn and I'm sure you could add other veg too.
Truly delicious.


The recipe is from this book http://www.jamieoliver.com/jamies-ministry-of-food/

If I could pick only one recipe book to own then this would be it. It is fantastic with many adaptations on simple dishes, and almost fool proof.

6 comments:

  1. Is it spicy? I'm not keen on any kind of spice at all...do you think it would lose something if I left the chilli out?

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  2. No its not spicy at all even with the chilli which sounds a bit odd it just adds a bit of a kick to it and its only half a chilli.My children eat it no problem.

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  3. Oh and I think the chilli balances out the lemon in it so for me I wouldn't want to leave it out but I guess theres no reason not to.

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  4. Ok shall give it a try thank you

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  5. Oh and the house doesn't stink of fish after.

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  6. It's really great with a big dolop of ketchup on the side too!

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