Fish Pie

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Wide, shallow pan for poaching
• •Large ovenproof dish (roughly 25cm x 20cm)
• •Potato masher or ricer
• •Medium saucepan for the sauce

Instructions

1. 1

   Poach the fish

   Lay the smoked haddock and salmon in a wide, shallow pan in a single layer. Pour over the milk, tuck in the bay leaf and peppercorns, and set it over a gentle heat. Bring it to the barest simmer. The milk should barely shiver, not boil. Poach for five to six minutes until the fish flakes when you press it with a fork. Lift the fish out carefully onto a plate and strain the milk into a jug. This milk is the foundation of your sauce. Don't throw it away.

   The milk will turn pale gold from the haddock. That colour is flavour. Every minute the fish sat in that milk, it was giving something back.
2. 2

   Boil eggs and potatoes

   While the fish poaches, put the eggs in a small pan of cold water, bring to the boil, and cook for nine minutes. Cool them under cold running water, then peel and halve. Put the potatoes in a large pan of well-salted water. Bring to the boil and cook until they surrender completely to a knife, about fifteen to twenty minutes. Drain thoroughly and leave them in the colander for a minute or two to steam dry. Mash with the butter and a splash of the poaching milk until smooth and generous. Season with salt and white pepper. You want the mash soft enough to spread but firm enough to hold its shape on top of the pie.

3. 3

   Make the sauce

   Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute or so, stirring constantly, until it smells biscuity and has lost its raw, pasty taste. Now pour in the strained poaching milk a little at a time, stirring well after each addition until smooth before adding the next. Keep going until all the milk is in and the sauce has the consistency of double cream: thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, thin enough to pour. Season carefully. Stir through most of the chopped parsley, saving a little for the top.

   If the sauce goes lumpy, don't panic. Take it off the heat, whisk it hard, or push it through a sieve. It always comes back.
4. 4

   Assemble the pie

   Set the oven to 200C/180C fan. Flake the poached fish into large, generous chunks, discarding any skin and stray bones, and scatter them across the bottom of a large ovenproof dish. Tuck the halved eggs in amongst the fish. Scatter the raw prawns over the top. Pour the sauce over everything and give the dish a gentle shake so it settles into the gaps. Spoon the mash on top in big dollops, then spread it to the edges, making sure it seals against the sides of the dish. Rough the surface up with a fork. Those ridges and peaks are what turn golden.

5. 5

   Bake until golden

   Bake for twenty-five to thirty minutes until the potato is properly golden on top and the sauce is bubbling up around the edges. You'll know it's ready when the kitchen smells like the kind of evening you want to sit down in. Let it stand for five minutes before you bring it to the table. It needs a moment to settle, and so do you.

Chef Tips

• •Buy undyed smoked haddock. The bright yellow sort has been dyed with annatto or tartrazine, and the colour is doing all the talking instead of the smoke. Proper cold-smoked haddock is pale, almost creamy, and the flavour is gentler and truer. Ask your fishmonger. It matters here.
• •The poaching milk is the whole trick. Everything the fish gives up during those quiet five minutes goes into that milk, and from there into the sauce. A fish pie made with plain milk in the sauce is a different, lesser thing. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, but this part isn't negotiable.
• •Don't cut the fish too small. You want generous flakes that hold their shape in the pie, not a uniform mince. Part of the pleasure is the surprise of finding a good chunk of salmon or a piece of smoky haddock on your spoon.
• •A handful of frozen peas stirred through the sauce before assembling is a quiet addition that earns its place, especially if you're feeding children. Not strictly traditional, but good. Your kitchen, your rules.

Advance Preparation

• •The pie can be fully assembled up to a day ahead, covered, and refrigerated. Add an extra ten minutes to the baking time if cooking from cold, and make sure it's bubbling right through before you serve.
• •The sauce and mash can be made several hours ahead and kept separately. Reheat the sauce gently before assembling. The mash may need loosening with a splash of warm milk.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 550g)