My cousins are coming for lunch here tomorrow for Christmas Eve, and as a result I've been presented with some assorted fish by the Anonymous Bystander and commanded to make a pie. This 'Oi, Rosie, make a pie' thing seems to be happening ever more frequently. I can't complain, though, because frankly I love a good pie.
Fish pie, like a lot of cooking, is quite a personal affair in terms of what you like to include. Do you prefer white fish or salmon? Smoked or plain? Prawns, mussels or both? Do you like boiled eggs in your pie? Leeks? Tomatoes? What herbs do you add? Do you top it with potatoes or pastry? Mashed or sliced, puff or filo? Or just sprinkle the filling with crushed up crisps? There are a hundred and one variations on the basic pie, but they all involve the same key elements: filling (meat, fish, or vegetables and sauce) and topping.
You'll probably find, like me, that the pie you end up with is dictated as much by the ingredients you have to hand as by your own taste. Hence, for example, my recipe today contains hard boiled eggs, even though I generally think they ruin a perfectly good pie. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, there wasn't enough fish to feed six people and I needed to bulk out the pie's filling; and secondly, and more importantly, I'm not at home for lunch tomorrow so I won't have to eat it...
I chose mashed potato for a topping, because I love the way it soaks up the sauce in a fish pie. I prefer puff pastry in a meat pie, but mash for fish. To be honest, I'm pretty sure your preference has a lot to do with how your mum makes hers. For the filling of my pie, I used what I had available, which this time happened to be some unsmoked haddock from the freezer (skin and bones on); some smoked salmon (unusual, but it happened to be at hand); and some prawns, which I think are essential in a top fish pie.
The basic pie usually involves cooking your fish if it's raw (smoked salmon and frozen prawns already count as cooked, by the way) by poaching it in milk with a couple of bay leaves. The milk just needs to be hot, not boiling, and you'll find that the fish turns crumbly and opaque very quickly. This means it's cooked; fish takes no time at all. Once all your fish is cooked off, you can leave it to cool a bit and make the pastry or mashed potatoes for the topping, the sauce, and anything else you're including in your filling. I used the cooking liquor from my haddock where you'd usually use plain milk in a bechamel sauce, which helped to blend the flavours of the fish and sauce in the finished pie. Once everything's cooked, you need to separate the fish into bitesize chunks, either by cutting it or with your fingers, and take off any bones or skin at the same time.
Finally, the easy bit: mix all the filling elements together with the sauce, pop it in a dish, and cover with the topping. You can freeze it at this point if you like, or it will keep in the fridge overnight or for a couple of days (not too long, or the fridge will smell all gross). When you want to serve it, you just put it in the oven until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling up around the sides. All it needs is some vegetables or salad to go along with it, and plenty of slices of fresh lemon. Yum.
Here's a rough recipe for the pie I made today, but bear it mind you can be very flexible with most of it.
Ingredients:
Around 1kg of whatever mixture of fish you fancy (best to avoid very oily fish though)
Around 1kg of assorted mussels, prawns, scallops, or other yummy things that you like. These should be cooked first.
Some butter
Some flour
A glass of white wine (and one for you)
Some milk
A couple of bay leaves
Lots of potatoes
Some butter and cream to go in the mash
Salt and pepper
About 5 eggs
A handful of parsley
Recipe:
1. Put your fish in a saucepan and cover with milk. If you don't have enough milk, make up the difference with water. Add some bay leaves and simmer very gently until the fish is cooked. This won't take long.
2. Set the fish aside to cool. Keep the cooking liquid for later. Make sure the rest of your filling is ready - hard boil the eggs if using, cut up the smoked salmon if using. Etc etc etc. Take a cooling sip of wine.
3. Cut and peel the potatoes, and boil then in another saucepan until they fall apart when you prod them with a knife. Drain and mash with butter and cream. Season, using more salt than you think is wise (another golden tip from the Food Guru there).
4. Separate the haddock into bitesize chunks, discarding the skin and bones as you go.
5. Make the sauce. Melt butter in a pan, add flour to make a roux. Pour in the glass of white wine and whisk until it's combined - it will be very thick. Add the haddock cooking liquid, very slowly and whisking all the time, until the sauce is the thickness you'd like in your pie.
6. Chop up your parsley and eggs, and put them in a bowl along with all the fish and the sauce. Mix together thoroughly, but try to keep the haddock in reasonably big chunks.
7. Top with the mashed potato (remember you can use pastry if you like), and make pretty patterns in it with a fork. These will turn lovely and crunchy when you cook the pie. At this point you can freeze it if you like.
8. To serve, cook in a medium oven (c.180) for 30-40 minutes, until the topping is golden and the sauce is bubbling up.
9. Drink plenty of white wine and congratulate yourself on a fantastic fish pie.
Cheese on top, duh.
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