Fishcake and Poached Egg in a Tarragon Sauce

This dish was inspired by something I saw in a restaurant that made me think 'that's a good idea!'. I like fishcakes but don't have them that often - the idea is often better than the reality. This dish is a bit different, really tasty and very filling, so you only need one fishcake per person and it goes well with some green veg like broccoli on the side.

The fishcake - I used shop-bought ones but you can make your own - is topped with a poached egg; I use Poachies Egg poaching Bags - 20 Bags and they usually turn out really well with runny yolks unless I leave them in the water a little too long as I've gotten distracted!

The sauce is made very easily, from melted butter, a dash of lemon juice, a little fish stock and some chopped dried tarragon. Place the fishcake in a bowl and the poached egg on top, and pour the sauce around the fishcake. Enjoy!

Spiralized Salmon and Broccoli Balls with Carrot Pineapple Rice

This recipe comes from Ali Maffucci's book Inspiralized, and takes a bit of preparation but the cooking time itself is minimal - and more importantly, it tastes amazing. If you've only spiralized courgette or butternut squash and used it instead of pasta so far, you are really missing out - there are so many ways you can use your spiralizer, but you could also make this recipe even if you don't have one.

I don't want to repeat the entire recipe as I'm sure Ali would appreciate it if you bought the book but I'm going to describe what I did. The recipe consist of three elements - salmon and broccoli balls, which I thought would be like fishcakes minus the potato but actually were quite different; homemade teriyaki sauce; and carrot 'rice' cooked with spring onion and pineapple.

I started by making the salmon balls. Preheat the oven, and pulse some broccoli in a food processor. Add a piece of salmon, some garlic and ginger and onion or shallot and pulse again. Turn the food processor off, and scoop the mixture into balls. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile make the teriyaki sauce by mixing soy sauce, mirin, honey, garlic and ginger.

After the salmon balls have baked for 15 minutes, drizzle over a couple of spoonfuls of the teriyaki sauce and bake for another 10 minutes.

Meanwhile spiralize some carrots -you need to choose quite thick ones otherwise it's tricky. I used three carrots; once they are spiralized, wash out the bowl of the food processor and pulse the carrots until you have a rice-like consistency.

In a small pan, heat a little coconut oil and fry some chopped spring onion, garlic and ginger. Add the carrot rice, some chopped pineapple and a little teriyaki sauce and stir fry for a few minutes. Serve the salmon and broccoli balls on top of the carrot. This was a delicious meal and I felt very healthy!

I'm entering this in Spiralizer Saturday, the blog challenge I run for all things spiralized. If you have any good recipes, link them up here!

I'm also sending this to Extra Veg, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Jamie Oliver's Swedish Style Fishcakes

I was planning my week's meals  and wondering if I could find something Swedish-inspired for the Bloggers Around the World challenge. I was given Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals a while ago as a gift and hadn't made all that much from it, so I was pleased to come across a recipe for Swedish style fishcakes, as I love fish and fishcakes. I did have to substitute fresh tuna for tinned tuna though, as I was shopping for this recipe on the way home from work and my little local supermarket didn't have any fresh tuna. I also only realised when I got home that I didn't have any bread to make breadcrumbs, so had to use dried golden breadcrumbs out of a packet.

To serve two, you need:

2 slices stale or crusty bread, or 4 tbsp golden breadcrumbs

1 salmon fillet, skin off and de-boned if necessary

1 haddock fillet, skin off and de-boned

1 tuna steak or half a tin of tuna

1 lemon

small bunch fresh parsley or dill

1 clove garlic

If making breadcrumbs from scratch, whizz the bread in a food processor until you have crumbs.

Place the salmon, haddock and tuna in a food processor with the grated zest of the lemon and the parsley or dill. Pulse until combined.

Transfer the mixture to a bowl, season and shape into patties

Place the breadcrumbs in a bowl and press both sides of the fishcake into the breadcrumbs

Heat some oil in a frying pan and add a clove of crushed garlic. Fry the fishcakes on both sides until browned.

I enjoyed these, though to be honest I would have preferred to eat the piece of salmon as it comes. The fishcake tasted of haddock and tuna and I think the taste of the salmon was lost a little. They made a nice change though!

I'm sending this to Bloggers Around the World, hosted by Chris at Cooking Around the World, as the country this month (until the 13th anyway when it changes) is Sweden.

Smoked mackarel fishcakes

I had some leftover mackarel pate from Boxing Day and some leftover mashed potato from dinner so I decided to make fishcakes.

I would normally just use the fish but in this case I had homemade mackarel pate - which was just smoked mackarel and soft cheese - and decided that would work just as well in a fishcake.

I simply mixed it with the mashed potato and added some herbs and seasoning.

I then shaped the mixture into patties and dipped them in breadcrumbs. Sometimes you might need to coat the fishcakes in flour then beaten egg to get the breadcrumbs to stick, but because I was using pate rather than fish the mixture was already wet enough for the breadcrumbs to stick.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until crisp.

 I took these into work for lunch along with some homemade low fat tartare sauce, which I made by mixing Quark, fat free fromage frais, lemon juice, seasoning and capers.

I am sending this to the No Waste Food challenge, hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen and Turquoise Lemons, as their challenge this month is finding ways to use up leftover mashed potato.

I am also sending this to Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours. She has rebranded the Frugal Food Friday challenge and is running it with Camilla from Fab Food 4 All. The idea remains the same - to share recipes which are thrifty and help you save money, and using up leftovers certainly does that.

Baltimore-style fishcakes

I like to think I'm pretty good at using up leftovers and I recently decided to make my own fishcakes to use up some leftover mashed potato. I quickly cooked a white fish fillet I had in the freezer, and broke it up in a bowl with the leftover mashed potato

 

 

There was also another reason I wanted to make this or something similar: to try out my new Old Bay Seasoning. My company's head office is in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of my colleagues there came over to the London office recently and bought me this as a gift:

Quite a strange gift, you may think... I had seen a few of these dotted around the office on people's desks and always wondered what it was! Old Bay Seasoning is a blend of herbs and spices made in the Chespeapke Bay area of Maryland, that is popular all over America; my colleague told me that there was once a big factory in Baltimore and everyone entering the city was met with the smell of the spices. It's become such a symbol of Baltimore that tourists often buy a bottle of Old Bay seasoning to take home, so she decided to bring me one as a gift!

Old Bay seasoning is usually used on seafood (Baltimore is on the coast) but can really be used on anything, and is made of a mix of spices including celery salt and paprika. I decided that it would be a good addition to my homemade fishcakes!

After shaping the fish and potato mixture into patties, I added a generous sprinkling of the seasoning, and a little natural yogurt to bind it together, and then dipped each patty in breadcrumbs.



Here they are about to go in the oven

And now just come out!

I think I may have used a little too much of the seasoning (!) but the fishcakes had a really nice flavour. This was a very impromptu dinner to use up leftovers so next time I might see if I can find a recipe to use the Old Bay seasoning... in fact I've just googled it and one recommendation is to sprinkle it on popcorn!

As this recipe uses up leftovers, I'm entering it into Frugal Food Fridays, which I am guest hosting this month on behalf of Helen from Fuss Free Flavours. You can enter anything that's thrifty, uses up leftovers or an ingredient you bought for something else, or uses less energy when cooking.... have a look at the rules (see the first of the two links above) and why not see if you've got anything you can enter this month?