Fish pie

We ate this on a cold February day, after zooming to the library to read about pirates, princesses and bears. I made you your own little pie, which you thought was fabulous.

This is great for using up any odds and ends of fish or prawns you’ve got lurking in the back of the freezer. To make enough for 4, you’ll need:

250g (ish) puff pastry (life’s too short to make this stuff)
chunks of fish – we had some cod offcuts from a previous meal, but any firm white fish or salmon would do
prawns – again, we had a mix of shell on prawns (which I de-shelled), and some of those tiny little cheapie frozen ones
1 onion, finely chopped
a couple of tablespoons of flour
1 tablespoon butter
milk – I must have used at least half a pint
a small pile of grated cheese – say 50g

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C. You’ll need to find a pie dish of some description – you could use lots of small ones (ramekins are perfect for small people), or a big pyrex or enamel job.

Fry the onions in a little olive oil until they’ve softened, and then tip them into your pie dish.

Next, you’ll need to poach your fish. Place it in a pan, and cover with milk. Bring to the boil, and then quickly turn down to a simmer. Depending on how large your pieces of fish are (in particular how thick), it’ll take from 4-8 minutes to poach them.

Fish the pieces out of the milk with a slotted spoon, and place on a plate. Flake, and check carefully for bones. Sling your small chunks of fish in the pie dish too, and add the prawns (assuming they’ve been defrosted thoroughly if you’ve retrieved them from the freezer!).

You now need to make a white sauce, to go over the fish and onions. Take the warm milk you used to poach the fish, and melt the butter in it. Add the flour, and whisk until it starts to thicken (keep simmering the milk, and don’t let boil). Add the grated cheese, salt and black pepper, and whisk until smooth.

Pour the white sauce over the fish. Roll out the pastry to the size of your dish, and place over the top of the fish mixture – you’ll need to make a couple of slits to let the steam out. Place the dish on a baking tray (in case of spills), and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until the pastry is puffed up and golden.

It’s delicious with some steamed broccoli – and of, course, you’ve got to have peas…

Fish, spinach and rice parcel

This is a bit like the koulibiac recipe I've done before - except with a bit more veg. The parcel sounds rather sinister, but is actually made with puff pastry. Hurrah!

You'll need:

trout - a couple of fillets
200g (ish) cooked rice
1/3 bag of fresh spinach, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 lemon, zested
salt and black pepper
250g block puff pastry

Stick the oven on at about 200 degrees C, and get out a large baking tray.

First of all, fry your onion in a little olive oil until it turns translucent. Chuck into a large bowl, and mix in the cooked rice. Add the spinach, and mix until everything has turned green.

Cover the trout with cold water, and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes or so until the fish is poached, and has turned pink throughout. Remove from the water, flake and add to the spinach/rice mix. Season everything with the lemon zest, and a good screw of salt and black pepper.

Roll out your puff pastry into a long rectangle, and then put carefully on your lined/greased oven tray. Place the fish/rice/spinach mix in a line down the middle of the pastry. It'll be quite a big, fat line - carefully ease the pastry up on both sides, and pinch together at the top (if it doesn't stick, use a little water to wet it).

Sling the whole parcel/roll into the oven, and bake for 25-30 minutes. It's really nice with a green salad, and a wedge or two of lemon.

Fishcakes

Perfect for a quick tea, after a busy afternoon jumping on beds and playing with Playmobil dinosaurs.

Makes 10 fishcakes

6 or 7 small/medium potatoes, peeled and chopped (or whatever leftover mash you have in the fridge)
a little milk
a good couple of knobs of butter
1 tin of tuna, drained
1 onion, finely diced
a handful of fresh parsley, chopped
a handful of fresh chives, chopped
a couple of tablespoons of flour

Stick the chopped potatoes in a pan of hot water, and simmer until soft. Mash together, adding a little milk to get a smooth texture. Tip into a large bowl, and add the tuna, parsley and chives.

Fry the onion in a little olive oil, until it's translucent. Chuck into the potato/tuna mixture. Mix everything together gently, and form into smallish fishcakes (about the diameter of digestive biscuits, but a lot thicker).

Melt a little butter in a frying pan over a gentle heat. Coat each fishcake in a little flour, and let sizzle in the pan - it'll need a couple of minutes each side.

We ate our fishcakes with some homemade coleslaw, and a green salad.

Note: If you want to do this properly with fresh fish, you'll need to poach your piece of fish in simmering milk to start off with. Flake the fish (taking off the skin, and removing any bones), and use the milk in the mash.

Fish parcels, with tomatoes, olives and parsley

A funny old day today - we went to the Baltic this afternoon, which was unusually uninspiring (all the kids things in the Quay on Level 2 just looked battered and old, and there didn't seem to be much that engaged you).

We ended up taking so long at the supermarket afterwards (thank you Tesco, your new layout is most unappreciated) that tea had to be something bung-in-the-oven-quick that would cook in 20 minutes while we watched a bit of telly.

You'll need:

a fillet each of white fish or salmon (we had pouting, which I'd never come across before, but was cheap in Morrisons. I think salmon would have been better - it was a bit bland)
half a jar of black olives
half a punnet of cherry tomatoes, halved
some long stems of parsley (we are still inundated with the stuff, even in March)
a little olive oil
black pepper

Turn the oven on to about 180 degrees C. Take a large piece of foil (squareish), and place a fillet in the centre. Chuck a tablespoon of cherry tomatoes on top, add 8-10 black olives and a couple of stems of parsley, and drizzle a little olive oil over the top. Season well with black pepper.

Fold up the foil into a parcel, and then place on a baking tray (if it leaks, you don't want fish juice all over the floor of your oven). Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or so - depending on the thickness of your fish.

We ate ours with some boiled, buttered potatoes, and some shredded cabbage.

Salt and pepper pan-fried fish

These are glorified fish fingers, I suppose. Curiously appropriate for an afternoon in which you've pretended to be a mermaid and built a cardboard boat with a paper sail.

You'll need

a couple of fillets of fish (we had basa, which I've had in France under the name of panga)
an egg, beaten
3 or 4 tablespoons of flour
lots of black pepper, a little salt
a little vegetable oil, or butter for frying

You can either slice your fillets into chunks (basa has fairly firm flesh), or do the whole fillet if you have a pan big enough. I suspect you might have to cook a whole fillet for longer than the small pieces.

Mix the flour, black pepper and salt together, and place in a large flat bowl. Dip each fillet (or piece) of fish in the beaten egg, and then dunk in the flour mix. Your Dad reckons that cornflour produces a lighter batter, and is particularly good if you're doing small pieces.

Heat the vegetable oil or butter in a frying pan until it's sizzling. Add the fish (you might have to do this in batches), and turn each piece over after a couple of minutes. You'll be able to see how well it's cooked by the colour of the fish. Fry for another couple of minutes until the outside is golden, remove, and eat asap.

We had ours with some homemade oven chips, and a green salad. The mermaid ate most of the fish, but thought that the chips were the best bit. C'est la vie.

Mediterranean fish stew

It's been one of those drizzly, mizzly sort of days, that's only cheered up by a bowl of steaming warmth and Captain Jack Wakeman.

You'll need:

fish (I used a couple of trout fillets, cut into chunks)
two tins of tomatoes
whatever potatoes you have left in the cupboard
a couple of green peppers
a few mushrooms
two onions
1/3 jar of black olives
a clove of garlic
salt, pepper, oregano

Fry the onion and garlic in a little olive oil, until it's softened. Add the peppers and mushrooms, and cook for a couple of minutes until they start to go soft too. Add the potatoes, and cook for another couple of minutes.

Bung in the tins of tomatoes, the olives and lots of seasonings, bring to the boil, and then simmer for 45 minutes or so, until the potatoes are soft, and you have a beautiful tomato-y sauce.

Add the fish, and simmer gently for another 10 minutes or so, until it's cooked (it might cook quicker, depending on the size of your chunks, so keep an eye on it).

Serve with some buttered couscous.

Fish pie

Proper nursery food, this. And quite appropriate after an afternoon at Mothercare buying small vests and socks.

For three, you'll need:

a couple of pieces of fish (we had pollack because it was cheap in Morrisons, salmon would be even nicer)
two smallish onions, finely chopped
enough milk to cover the fish
whatever frozen prawns you can rustle up from the freezer, defrosted
a knob of butter
a tablespoon of flour
a couple of really large potatoes
salt, pepper, nutmeg and a bay leaf

Start off with the potatoes. Peel them, chop them up reasonably small, and stick in a pan with boiling water for about 12 minutes. Once they're soft, mash, adding lots of salt and pepper.

Then it's onto the onions. Saute them in a little olive oil for 6 or 7 minutes until they're soft. Chuck them in the bottom of your pie dish.

Check there aren't too many bones in the fish. Cover with milk, add a bayleaf, and simmer for 10 minutes or so, until it's cooked. The length of time will depend on (a) how thick it is and (b) whether you've got it straight out of the fridge and plunged it into a pan. A couple of minutes before the end, chuck in the prawns so they're cooked too.

Lift the fish and prawns out from the milk (don't throw the milk away!!). Take any skin off, flake it, remove any bones, and add to the onions in the bottom of the pie dish.

Add butter, flour and some grated nutmeg to the milk, and whisk gently for 10 minutes or so on a low heat, until the sauce has thickened. Pour over the fish mixture in the pie dish. Top with the mashed potato, and stick in the oven (at about 180C) for half an hour or so, until the top has gone crispy and the fish mixture is bubbling away.

You can get fancier - you could add some celery to the onion, maybe put some cheese on top of the potato, add some peas, vary the fish...the possibilities are endless.

Tilapia with lime and butter

You picked these out at the supermarket fish counter today, because they looked friendly. They tasted pretty good too.

For two large people and one small person you'll need:

a couple of large(ish) tilapia, gutted but with the heads and tails still on
a lime, sliced into large pieces
salt and pepper
a knob of butter for each fish

Stick the oven on at about 180-200 degrees C. You'll need a couple of large squares of foil, to wrap the fish in. Stick the fish in the middle of the foil, shove a few pieces of lime inside, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place a knob of butter on the top, and then parcel up the fish, making sure that there's no gaps.

Place both fishy parcels on an oven tray, and cook for 30-40 minutes in the oven. The fish will steam in its parcel - it's quite firm, white flesh. There's a few bones, but as they're huge, it's easy to pick them out (especially if you slice carefully along the backbone, and pull one side of the flesh back).

We ate this with lots of lime chutney, some rice, and steamed broccoli dipped in soy sauce. The rice was a bit overdone because the cat threw up on the bed at an inopportune moment, but the less said about that the better.

Black halibut and parma ham parcels

Sounds poncey. In reality, it's whatever cheap fish Morrisons had, wrapped in some parma ham. We'd been out all afternoon strawberry picking (and eating) near Corbridge, so when we got home this was all I felt like cooking.

You need:

some nice pieces of fish - black halibut was ok, but was one of those fish that falls apart rather, and is a bit squidgy. Something firm (like monkfish, assuming you win the lottery, or salmon), might be a better bet.
a few slices of parma ham

Check the fish for pinbones, and remove any that you see. Wrap each piece in parma ham. Stick in the oven (at around 175 degrees C) for about 20-30 minutes, until the parma ham goes crispy, and the fish is cooked through. It'd probably work quite well if you pan fried the fish pieces too.

We ate this with chips (slice some large potatoes reasonably thinly (leave the skins on), drizzle a bit of olive oil over the top, and stick in the oven on a high heat for 30 minutes or so), a green salad and some rhubarb chutney.

Obviously, there were strawberries for pudding...