Family fish pie

Serves:

Ingredients

• 1 kg floury potatoes
• 1 tbsn butter
• splash of milk
• 1 leek, cut in half lengthways and slice thinly
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 500g fresh firm fish, I used 250g salmon fillets and 250g ling fillets
• 25 g butter
• 2 tbsn plain flour
• 500ml milk
• salt and pepper, to taste

Method

Put a saucepan filled with cold water on the stove to boil. Peel potatoes and cut into 5cm chunks. Drop into boiling water and cook until just tender.

Drain potatoes and add 1 tbpsn butter and a generous splash of milk. Mash the potato mixture thoroughly until it is smooth and lump-free. Season with salf. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add olive oil then add leeks and carrots. Cook for three minutes, or until the leeks begin to look transluscent. Remove from heat.

Roughly dice fish up into 5cm pieces. Place the uncooked fish, the leek and carrots, and the frozen peas together into an oven dish.

To make the white sauce, heat the milk in the microwave until hot (about 1 min). Heat a small saucepan over medium heat, add the butter and once it has melted, add the flour. Vigorously stir to create a paste and then keep cooking it for two minutes. Take this mixture off the heat while you add a quarter of the milk, stir rapidly over heat to combine and thicken, remove from the heat again to add the next quarter, stir to combine. Continue until all the milk has been added to the saucepan and the sauce thickened. Season as required.

Pour the white sauce over the fish mixture and thoroughly combine.

Cover the top of the fish with the mashed potato and then grate chedder cheese across the top of the pie to cover it.

Place in the oven for 35 mins. When it is cooked, remove from the oven and allow to stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Serving Suggestions

Note

• This really is just a dressed-up Tuna mornay
• My kids were suspicious about this pie but they all really enjoyed it – and finished the whole pie!
• You could use any vegetables that work in your family. Just choose veggies that won’t collapse and go mushy.
• I chose Ling and Salmon because they are both firm fish that can withstand being cooked in the oven.
• Don’t pre-cook the fish because it will become very dry in the pie.
• I chose two types of fish mainly for the colour contract – while the white of the Ling disappears into the white sauce, the pink of the salmon really stands out.
• This recipe was created by Ella Walsh for Kidspot, New Zealand