I had some left over mashed potatoes so I decided to get creative and make some fish cakes using some frozen hoki fillets. For added points I decided to make a Béchamel sauce. That’s a fancy name for a white sauce.
I started off by cooking the Hoki fillets in a little milk with a few herbs. (Did I mention that I’d thawed it first?) I used “Tuscan seasoning” by MasterFoods, which the label says contains salt, sugar, garlic, pepper, rosemary and parsley. The fish was cooked in about 15 minutes (at 180 degrees C) to the point where it flaked when poked with a fork.
Meanwhile I chopped some fresh parsley from the garden and added it to the mashed potato and stirred in two eggs. The mixture looked a little stiff so I added some of the liquid that the fish was cooked in. That was a mistake! I added too much and it went sloppy. Oh well. I added the cooked fish and put dollops of the mixture on a baking tray and cooked it at 200 degrees C for 20 minutes. “Dollops” is the right word. It was far too sloppy to form proper fish cakes.
I then made a roux. A “roux” is a fancy name for a 50-50 fat/flour mix which is cooked for a while. It is made into a white sauce (Béchamel) by slowly adding milk and cooking it (stirring all the time) until it is the desired consistency. I used the liquor that the fish was cooked in.
Here’s the “fish cakes”. I didn’t brush them with milk or egg, so they are a little palid. They are cooked though.
This is what it looked like on my plate.
Well, they tasted OK, but could have looked better! I’ve had enough runner beans for a while, but thankfully they seem to be taking a rest at the moment. Only one or two beans today.
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