Fish Pie
A very simple and fast fish pie
This recipe does not use a white sauce in the fish pie. As a fair amount of people moan about that, I'll give you an explanation why. White sauce is made of butter, flour, and milk. Mashed potatoes are made with butter and milk... So the idea here is to make a fairly moist mash - so the only thing missing is the flour. If you miss it, have a spoon of it on the side ;-)
Preparation Time
1 hourIngredients
per person: (we are using 4 times these quantities in the photos shown)
- 100g fish (cod,salmon, trout, etc. best mixed)
- 250 g Potatotes
- 50 g frozen peas
- 40 g mature cheddar
- 20 g butter
- milk
- salt
- pepper
- a bit of vegetable oil
Preparation
| Preparation | |
 | Use an ovenproof dish. Pour a small amount of vegetable oil into the dish and rub it with your fingers to distribute it evenly. This will keep the fish from sticking to the dish. |
 | Place the fish pieces with the skin side down into the dish, salt and pepper lightly and pour a bit of milk over the fish so it's about half covered. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade (350 Fahrenheit, Gas Mark 4). |
 | Peel the potatoes, put them into a saucepan and cover them with water. Add a pinch of salt to the water and put to a boil. When the potatoes are boiling, put the fish into the oven. |
 | Put the frozen peas into a saucepan and cover them with water. Add a pinch of salt and put them on the hob - low heat will do. You don't want to boil the peas (this will make them come out of their skins and turn them into mushy peas ...) |
 | Set your kitchen timer to 20 minutes, relax and have a glass of wine. When your peas have come close to boiling point, take them off the hob and drain them. Put them to the side. |
 | Grate the cheese - this doesn't have to be too fine. The chunky cheese grater will do. |
 | When the 20 minutes are up, drain the potatoes and let them sit in the saucepan without a lid - we want the rest of the water to evaporate. |
 | Take the fish out of the oven (so it has cooked for 20 minutes) and drain off the milk. Keep the drained off milk as we will use it later to make the potato mash. Now turn up the heat of the oven to 220 degrees centigrade (425 Fahrenheit, Gas Mark 7) |
 | Remove any bits of milk skin from the dish. |
 | Using two forks, separate the fish into small bits pulling the bits off the skin. |
 | Then remove the skin from the dish. It will come off easily as we greased the dish earlier ... |
 | Distribute the fish evenly. |
 | Put the butter, some salt and pepper to the potatoes. |
 | Add some of the milk you drained off the fish earlier - careful - don't use all of it. Start off with a small amount. |
 | Then mash the potatoes like you've never mashed before! This is the important bit - we want the mashed potatoes to be very smooth and creamy - and that involves muscle power! Don't add any more milk if you haven't mashed at least for a minute - if the mash is too thick and crumbly, add some more milk and mash again. Please be careful not to make the mash too liquid as that will ruin the fish pie. |
 | Now we add the peas... |
 | ... and very gently mix them into the mash using a fork. Be careful as we don't want to mash up the peas. |
 | Now fork the mash on top of the fish ... |
 | ... and spread it evenly. |
 | Put the grated cheese on top ... |
 | ... and also distribute it evenly. Now we can put the dish back into the oven. Leave it there for 20 minutes. After 10 minutes, turn it around so the cheese will brown evenly - most ovens don't distribute the heat evenly - not even fan assited ovens. |
 | This is what your fishpie should look like - enjoy! |
Best with ...
A dry white wine - like a French "Entre deux mers"