Читать книгу The Kitchen Diaries II - Nigel Slater - Страница 41

I do love a fish pie, with its flaky, undulating pastry crust or deep, furrowed lid of mashed potatoes crisped in the oven. For an everyday fish pie, the sort I might make for a midweek supper, I take a shortcut with the crust, using breadcrumbs and herbs blitzed in the food processor or thin slices of potato. That way I get a crisp lid as a contrast to the softness underneath without having to make and roll pastry. When time is of less importance, at the weekend, say, I use a more traditional crust of butter and flour or potatoes whipped up with parsley and butter to contrast with the deep, creamy, piscine filling.

Which fish I use for a pie will change according to supply, whim and conscience. Fish is rarely a cheap eat, but we can trim the bill a little by choosing the less popular varieties such as ling and whiting and, if it is to our taste, coley (try as I might, I can’t find much excitement in a piece of coley). A sustainable alternative to the knee-jerk varieties is crucial and I have had much success with pollack and line-caught haddock. I’m getting used to gurnard too, a bit of an ugly bugger but with a reasonable flavour. A firm-textured fish once used as lobster bait and now appearing on menus everywhere, from Moro to Rick Stein’s restaurants in Padstow, the gurnard responded well to being baked with cream and basil. I introduced a potato top, neat slices laid one overlapping the next, a way of padding out a few fish fillets to make them go a bit further. It’s a sweet and gentle pie, without the stodge of one crowned with mashed potatoes (good though they can be). Something to serve with steamed purple sprouting broccoli or the salad that follows.