This is another great family dish and brilliant for babies – my baby and toddler love fish pie. Like bolognese sauce, there are quite a lot of ways you can make fish pie, and the more you make, the closer you get to making the perfect fish pie for your family.
Serves: 2 adults and approx 6-8 kiddie portions or 4 adults
Ingredients
- Olive oil
- 800g white filleted and skinned fish (we recommend coley as it is works well in fish pie and is the least expensive of the white fish)
- 1 salmon fillet, skinned
- 700ml milk (full-fat is best)
- 1 onion, quartered
- 1 leek, finely chopped
- 2 carrots, diced
- 4 cloves
- 2 bay leaves
- 100g butter
- 50g plain flour
- Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
- 1kg potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
- 50 g cheddar
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 180C / gas 6.
- Poach the fish. Put the fish in a pan and pour over most of the milk (leaving approx 100ml for the mashed potatoes).
- Stud each onion quarter with clove, then add to the milk, with the bay leaves.
- Bring the milk just to the boil – you will see a few small bubbles.
- Reduce the heat and simmer for 8 mins. Lift the fish onto a plate with a slotted spoon and strain the milk into a jug to cool.
- Flake the fish into large chunks into your baking dish and your freezer trays.
- Boil the potatoes for 20 mins. When cooked, drain and season and mash with half the butter and remaining milk .
- Fry the leeks and carrots in the olive oil until soft. Add to fish in baking dish and freezer trays.
- Make the sauce. Melt the other half of the butter in a pan, stir in the flour and cook for 1 min over a moderate heat (to cook the flour).
- Take off the heat and add 1/3 of poaching milk, and stir until blended.
- Add the next 1/3rd of the milk and whisk the finally add the remaining poached milk and continue whisking until you have a nice creamy sauce.
- Remove from heat and add nutmeg, then pour over the fish in the baking dish and freezer trays.
- Finally, top the pies with mash, fluff the tops with a fork and sprinkle with cheese. Bake for 30 mins or until golden and bubbling.
- The smaller portions will take less time to cook.
- If you are freezing, wait until the pies have cooled then cover and label and pop in the freezer!
Sarah’s Tips
For example, if you like smoked fish, use half white fish fillet and half smoked haddock fillet. If you don’t fancy leek or carrot, then just use onion. This is the recipe that seems to work best for my family, adding the extra vegetables does give the pie a lovely additional flavour and is of course a great way of including them in the meal for your little ones.
If you’re pressed for time, don’t make fish pie! It’s not a complicated dish at all, but I’ve always found that I need a bit of time to make it. Preparing vegetables in advance would certainly help. Fish pie is a yummy great freezer dish, so make the most of your time, bulk cook and freeze portions, especially for the kids!
Photo Credit: Simon Aughton
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