Fish cakes - comfort food to trendy dish
"Fishcakes are very flexible things (well until you try to keep them together in the pan, that is." Felicity Cloake
I'm going to have yet another go at making fish cakes for dinner tonight, though with some trepidation because the potatoes I am going to use are from a leftover gratin and they are therefore a bit moist. I think I shall also be adding some spinach - also a bit moist. But I do love them so I have been checking out tips for what to do to stop them all falling apart as Felicity Cloake so rightly points out that they have a tendency to do.
The main tips seem to be to add breadcrumbs to the mix to absorb more of the moisture and also to dry the potatoes off in a pan before using them. And don't forget to leave them in the fridge to firm up for half an hour or so before cooking them.
I'm hoping mine will look like the fairly homely looking version above, with maybe a bit more green from the spinach.
The great thing about fish cakes is that you can put just about anything in with the fish - which can be of any kind - including shellfish (the Americans use crab mostly) and smoked fish. And not always with potatoes either. Nigel Slater adds some beetroot with his smoked fish version - rather like my quiche. Yotam Ottolenghi sums up the variety and the possibilities very well:
"The beauty of a fishcake, by which I mean any dish made of chopped-up fish (squidgy Thai tod mun pla, Turkish balik koftesi, Jewish gefilte fish, British flaky potato-based cakes, South American ceviche) is that it allows the fish to mix with all sorts of other ingredients and absorb their flavours, resulting in some wonderfully surprising combinations. In many cases, the fish turns into something far more textural, while its flavour stays in the background, gently holding everything together.
I had a great example of this on a tiny fishing boat off the coast of Essaouira in Morocco, when a couple of local fisherman minced whole freshly caught sardines, mixed them with local bread, shaped them into balls and quickly cooked them with tomatoes, cumin and preserved lemon. The sardines, with all their natural intensity, just bowed down to the acidity of the tomatoes and the lemon, creating a memorable yet subtle experience, not fishy at all."
He has several recipes of his own - and here is one of them, that somehow looks amazingly middle eastern. You can find the recipe here.
The ones I remember from my childhood were made from tinned fish - usually salmon, but sometimes pilchards. It was an economical but tasty dish - and I suspect that my mother did nothing more than mix the fish with the potatoes and then roll them in breadcrumbs (packaged ones - oh dear, but there were no electric wands or food processors then.) And I'm afraid I'm going to use tinned fish too - but Jamie Oliver does, so why shouldn't I?
However, since we have become more familiar with Asian food - particularly Thai - fish cakes have evolved into something rather more special. And for these you do not use tinned fish - well maybe if you are making crab cakes you might. Here are a few examples of 'posh' fishcakes. The first two are Luke Nguyen's Vietnamese version and Delia Smith's Rösti crab fishcakes.
Then there are the really posh versions - although when you look at them they are posh mostly because of the fancy presentation. The basic cake is probably similar to anything you or I might be able to cook up. I think the one in the middle looks most impressive - probably the simplest too.
They're a far cry from the fish cakes you can buy in a fish and chip shop anyway, and these cannot be good for you, seeing as how they are deep fried in batter.
And yes I think we used to eat them with chips - which is all wrong isn't it? After all you've already got potatoes in the fish cakes. And maybe baked beans too. Which I now think would not be appropriate. I might try and make some sort of tartare sauce. And I'm sort of hoping that they will look much like Felicity Cloake's perfect fish cakes. Though now that I think about it I have no lemons, so I shall have to research tartare sauce - which is tangy. Surely I don't resort to vinegar?
