OK after my last post I've had the lovely Miss Mimoo and Mrs Fudge request the recipe for that Fish Pie. It's dead simple but really was very tasty. My guess is they key ingredient like most of Kym's cooking is 'salt'... he he
Oh and taste as you go! Don't try and adjust the seasoning at the end. Some people like more salt or less dill and so on - make it to suit your taste buds. And we found it makes a fair bit - maybe about 6 big serves.
Here were go...
Ingredients
- 2 fillets of fresh fish, chopped into pieces (we used king snapper, but any white fish will do as long as you put it in at the end so it doesn't break up)
- 1/4 large fennel, finely chopped
- 1 leek (white only), finely chopped
- 1 carrot, finely chopped
- 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 6 or so mushrooms, sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 500 ml fish or chicken stock (we had our own homemade chicken stock and found this worked well and I preferred that it wasn't as 'fishy')
- 1/4 lemon, zest only
- 1 small bunch of dill and parsley, finely chopped
- Shortcrust pastry - enough to make a top and bottom. (we needed about 3 sheets)
- Approx 100ml Pastis (French digestive drink which has an aniseedy flavour, Ricard is a good one, but Pernod would do for a cheaper alternative). Now I'm told this is 'essential' to the recipe by Kym too!
Method
-Line a large pie dish (I use our big lasagna one!) with the pastry (make sure you cover the sides) and blind bake for 10 minutes or so. You can do this first or as you're cooking the mixture if you can multi-task :)
- Saute in a large onion and garlic lightly in a fair bit of vegetable oil and approx 1-2 tbsp butter until clear.
- Add the Pastis and let it cook off a little.
- Add carrot, then celery and then fennel, sweating these for about 5-10 minutes.
- Then add the leak and mushrooms.
- Add your stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring back to the boil and then reduce heat to a simmer.
- Add the zest and additional water if needed. Taste and add more Pastis if necessary.
- While the mixture is simmering away, make a white roux. Basically this is just butter melted in a pan, add some flour or cornflour and keep stirring. It will go into a ball and you just keep stirring it over the heat. Then take a little of the liquid from the simmering mixture and add it to the roux, continuously stirring so there's no lumps. Add the roux slowly to the pie mix to thicken. Taste it and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
Apparently a brown roux is when you keep it on heat and the mix darkens, and a white roux is when it's just mixed together and removed from heat.
- Add the parsley and dill - enough to suit your taste preferences. Keep tasting!
- Add the fish pieces and stir in. Try not to break up the fish too much, so stir carefully!
- Add the pie mixture into the dish, add pastry as a lid and bake in a moderate oven. We found about 20-25 minutes did the trick - just until the pastry is cooked on top.
Well good luck :) Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of it before we ate it all... hence the best I could do was our Pastis bottle :p
If you've got any questions just ask away! Love to hear your feedback too if you give it a go.
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