Fish Pie Recipe
April 4th, 2009 by Scott |
Print This Article | Leave a Comment
So here’s the story. I was joking around with this rather “large” guy at work the other week about his fondness of pies (I’ve never seen him eating one. It’s a light-hearted joke about his weight) and saying how I should blog a pie recipe just for him. The same weekend I saw the “Two Fat Ladies” on a TV re-run cooking a fish pie (didn’t write down the recipe but got the idea) and immediately made the connection. I’m a nice guy like that.
This pie recipe fits nicely with the theme of this months seasonal food blogging challenge “In The Bag“, where the ingredients are eggs, leeks, and cheese – all of which make an appearance here. I’ve opted for plain haddock in the recipe instead of smoked (which I’d have preffered) due to my wife’s pregnancy; apparently smoked food is a no-no, which is unfortunate for a lady from a country where smoked sausage is pretty much a staple food. Feel free to use some smoked fish if you prefer, though.
I’ll apologise in advance for my non-precise measurements below. I didn’t measure as I cooked and to be honest neither should you; just go with what looks right (this isn’t baking; you can’t really mess it up). I don’t know the size of the dish you’re going to use so can’t really tell you how much potatoes you’ll need to cover it.
Fish Pie Recipe – Ingredients
- 4 Haddock Fillets (smoked if preferred, or a mixture of the two)
- 3 Carrots, finely diced
- 3 Hard Boiled Eggs, quartered.
- 1 Stick Celery, finely sliced
- 1 Leek, finely sliced
- Floury Potatoes such as Maris Piper, peeled and chopped.
- 25g (0.88 oz) Butter
- 25g (0.88 oz)Plain Flour
- Milk
- Mature Cheddar Cheese
- Salt & pepper, to taste
- Nutmeg, to taste
Here goes one of the easiest recipes you’ve ever done. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees c (355 degrees f) to start off.
- First off put the fish fillets, diced carrot, celery and leek into a frying pan. Pour over enough milk to cover, bring to a simmer and leave it for 10 minutes. At the same time boil your peeled potatoes until soft.
- Sieve the cooked stuff which will leave you with a) a jug of fishy milk and b) some fish and vegetables. Put the fish and veg into your baking dish and leave the milk in a jug for now.
- Mash your potato. There’s nothing complicated about this; add salt and pepper, a nob of butter and a slosh of the fishy milk. You’re looking for a mash that isn’t over-worked; it doesn’t want to sink into the fish while cooking or you’ll just end up with a mess.
- Fish now hopefully cooled, pick apart into flakes with your fingers, removing any bones you come across at the same time. Remove the skin, too.
- Now for the sauce. Butter and flour into a small pot over a medium heat, stir until melted and combined (a thick and gloopy mixture). Now pour in your milk about 100ml at a time, always stirring and allowing to thicken before adding more. Stop when the required thickness (like syrup) is reached; this will be about 500ml of milk. Season well with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg.
- Pour your sauce into your fish mixture and stir well; at this stage add your quartered eggs randomly through the mix (I add them now to stop them breaking up with any stirring or such-like). Slowly heap the mashed potato on to the top, making sure not to leave any gaps especially near the edges; smoothing the surface with the back of a spoon seems to help prevent any leakages. Cover liberally with grated cheddar cheese.
- Into the oven for about 30 minutes until golden on top, then serve and enjoy!
Tags: fish, fish pie, in the bag, itb
Filed under: Meat & Fish.
RSS for comments to this post
Leave a Comment 
Trackback URL
Subscribe by Email
Ooh good choice for the bag. Can’t beat fish pie; athough it didn’t even occur to me when we put our list of ingredients together.
It didn’t occur to me either until I decided to cook it and then realised the ingredients it contained matched our bag contents. All worked out well in the end though!
I prefer non measured recipes. I have hard time writing mesurements in the blog, & have to make sure to write down what i am using while cooking … generally i just throw in things to taste.
Nice recipe, putting ITB together. I made something new for ITB this time too:)
Great minds think alike. I rarely follow recipes to the letter, unless it’s a cake or something else that I could mess up.
Nice. I think you’ve inspired me to have fish pie tomorrow
I like the idea of leeks in fish pie, less sure about the boiled egg – how did it work?
The boiled egg was OK – you wouldn’t lose anything by missing it out, to be honest.
Your recipe is so timely. I’ve been watching “Last Restaurant Standing” on BBC America, and at least one of the contestants is forever making fish pie on that show. Yours, however, looks infinitely better!
Thanks, although I wasn’t best pleased with the photographs myself! Tasted good though.
I miss that show. Those ladies had a blast in life. I make their scones a lot. This pie came out great. Good luck with those ants in the kitchen….I freak out over bugs in the house. ICK!
This might make me try a fish pie! I’ve only recently started to like fish. We never had any at home growing up so I always thought fish was too “fishy” in taste (for lack of a better description) but I love most fish now. I haven’t done any fish pies out of fear that it would taste well… fishy again, but this looks wonderful! I bookmarked the recipe to try it out later!
I understand exactly, I felt the same when I was younger. Some sea-fish can taste quite “fishy” indeed. This pie doesn’t though, I promise!
This looks scrumptious! A variation on the French Brandade but oh so much tastier, in my opinion. We love smoked haddock, so maybe I’ll give it a try!
If you give it a try be sure to tell me how it works for you. I’d love to know!
I don’t think I’ve ever had a fish pie! Maybe I will make this the next time my husband goes on a business trip (he can’t stand it when I make fish at home, poor guy).
Hi Ari,
Sad to hear your husband doesn’t like fish – no wonder you make so many cakes
I like the haddock idea in place of smoked fish. It looks and sounds great!
It’s cheaper, too. Worth a try IMO.
You really can’t go wrong with fish pie, can you? It’s one of my favourite staples & yours sounds fab.
Thanks Jeanne. Simple comfort food always goes down well.
Why when printing off this document do you set it though you get six pages/ all anybody wants is the recipe, not thgree or four pages of a forum
Hi,
Thanks for the information – I didn’t realise it printed all of the comments too. I’ll try and fix that over the next week. Sorry!