Fabulous fish pie

daveed

Wednesday, 8 April 2009

I’m not actually sure this is the best way to behave, but I always invite myself to my friend’s house for dinner. You know how it goes... we work hard, we have boyfriends, children, husbands, pottery classes, burlesque dancing lessons, shopping to do... and before you know it your friends have forgotten where you live, what you’re called and whether you’re still alive or not. So I generally take the bull by the horns and call them first, have a moan about their busy life and slyly manipulate the conversation towards a dinner invite. I might be a little evil but at least I get fed!

I’ve always ended up living with either students or artists and neither group couldn't afford (or refused to buy) expensive ingredients - so I rapidly made a name for myself by producing three course meals out of a sole tin of chopped tomatoes.

One of my friends, having discovered my trick, now demands that I cook when I come round. It started as an innocent “Let’s play Ready Steady Cook! Here’s my fridge, now what’s for dinner?” and has become my favourite way to catch up with mates.

So I thought I'd share a recipe that came about last Wednesday, when I turned up at Louise and Sam's, exchanged greetings and compliments and glided gracefully towards their newly fitted kitchen to start working my magic...

Inside the fridge were:

2 small smoked trout fillets
1 small salmon steak
4 tiger prawns playing tag
1 small pot of single cream
1 packet of puff pastry (a day away from its sell-by-date)
some d(r)ying mushrooms and
1 lemon.

Although Louise tried to draw my attention to a packet of sausages thinking it would go well with mash potatoes, I promptly dismissed the idea... if THAT was going to be dinner, she didn't need me to cook it! (...you can take the student away from the bangers and mash, but you cannot take the bangers and mash away from the student, it’s a fact of life!)

Instead I decided to make a fish pie. Maybe not a Nigella or a Rick Stein fish pie, but who has the time nowadays to fish for their own rainbow trout? Or try to find the right bus to take you to Middle Farm for some organic vegetables? No-one!

So here are my instructions for a simple fish pie:

1) Skin the trout fillets, crumb the meat and reserve in a bowl.

2) Cut the salmon fillet into strips, season with seas salt, cracked red pepper (black pepper will do) and some chopped dill and add to the bowl.

3) Peel the tiger prawns and reserve.

4) Cut the mushrooms into quarters, (if they are looking a bit tired, once cut, pass them very briefly under the cold tap to re-hydrate them, give them 5 minutes and use them as fresh) Then in a very hot frying pan, fry a little garlic with some extra virgin olive oil and add the shrooms to give them a bit of flavour. Cook them very briefly and reserve.

5) Squeeze the lemon in the bowl and toss all that goodness together, before laying it in a pie dish evenly. Pour enough cream (approx 150 to 200 ml) to just cover the mix.

6) Wet the edges of the dish with an egg yolk and water mix, then cover the dish with pastry ensuring that the edges are sealed. Make a hole in the middle of the pastry, this will help some of the cooking steam to escape without blowing your pie up like a hot air balloon. Then with a brush, wet the whole pastry with the egg/water mix to help it brown evenly.

7) Place in a hot oven at 180°C for a good 45 minutes or until the top is crisp and golden.

And there you have it - a quick, easy and delicious fish pie that didn't take long to prepare, hardly made any mess and probably cost you close to nothing to make.

I personally like a fresh rocket salad and french dressing to go with that, but if you can't, at the very least, splash out on some nice crusty bread. Reward yourself with a glass of wine, and look around you to appreciate the world with the eyes of a newly achieved culinary master. The kitchen didn't burn down and the world hasn't stopped spinning while you were cooking.

Remember, baby steps, baby steps...