hi there my name is Danny Kingston and I
write a blog called food urchin and I
also write for Great British chef so you
can find me on there and today we're
going to make a celebratory fish pie
ordinarily a fish pie would have this
mashed potato toping wouldn't it and you
probably sometimes add a bit of cheese
on top we're going to get away from that
and we're going to use some puff pastry
instead now I'm using puff pastry to
today because I really like the idea of
having this lovely crispy lid flaky and
full of lovely bits of Flakes and
texture coming off there but I think we
can just take it a little bit further by
using some of the leftover pastry so
what we're going to do is put a fish on
top and I'm going to show you how to do
that
too so to start things off we're going
to simmer the fish in some milk and
we're going to add some aromatics in
there got the onion and the pepper corns
and that will take probably about 5
minutes just to come up to
temperature right I'm happy with a
simmer on that now so I'm just going to
gently lower my hadock in
there I'm going to cook this hadock for
7 minutes tops and in goes the
prawns again we just want to give these
2 minutes in the poaching liquer
there right we're just about there I'm
quite happy because the skin is starting
to flake away those hack are good to
come
out okay so I'm melting the butter right
down here and basically the golden Ru
for any R is you need to use equal
amounts of butter and flour so for
instance you for this recipe we're using
30 G of butter and 30 G of
flour it is always worth taking some
time when you're at this stage of making
your R don't think as soon as you put
your flour in that everything's done you
really want to try and cook that flour
out whisking away for a minute or
so okay that's a nice power biscuit
color now so I'm quite happy to just
slowly pour the milk
in add just a little bit at a
time so there we have
have just a basic white sauce
there so we've gathered all our
ingredients together and they're all
smelling great uh so all that's left for
me to do here is to just get everything
into the sauce and get it all nicely
mixed
together here is my hot smoked salmon
which you would have noticed that I have
done no cooking to uh because of course
the whole process of hot smoking Cooks
the fish through itself
so this is really starting to smell good
now in fact I'm not even sure I want to
put this in a
pie let's add
spinach now for the last bit I just need
to add some nutmeg and I'm only really
going to grate in half a nutmeg here
that'll be just right for this amount so
keep the mix going and then drop
in a nice doop of
cream and of course we can't forget
parast fish's best
friend okay I'm ready to roll out my
puff pastry now so what I'm going to do
is just lightly flour the table and
we're just going to work the pastry just
so it's nice and ready for that glorious
lid that we're going to make for the
pie okay and I suppose what we're aiming
for here is to roll it out to the
thickness of say a 1B
coin and of course to make sure that the
area is enough to cover the the the top
of your pie dish so I'm just going to
scoop that in
there and then
just
gently lifted it over as you can see
I've got the excess here so I need to
get a sharp knife and just trim that off
and I'm going to crimp that down using a
fork now we just need to give the Topp a
quick glaze before we finish off with
that
fish right happy with that now this is
where all those art lessons back at
school come back into
play if this is going to be a
celebratory fish
dish I absolutely and 100% endorse that
your fish has a smiley happy face on
it put that in the
center and give that a final EG watch
too well I'm very happy with that and I
can't wait to see what it looks like
when it comes back out the
oven so there we have it my celebratory
fish pie which would make for a great
alternative on an Easter Sunday get rid
of that lamb and put this in the center
of the table and everyone's guaranteed
to start smiling we've got the puff
pastry there nicely crisped up we've got
the luxurian filling that cream the
hadock the salmon the prawns the spinach
the nutmeg everyone is is really going
to look forward to diving into this one