How I love a homemade fishcake, and how I love David’s recipe for making them. Because basically, it’s a fishcake template. I am sure David wouldn’t mind you putting in whatever you have around the place. Here’s his recipe, in his very own words.
Take any old piece of left over fish (the better the fish the better the cake). Mix it up with boiled potatoes. Pop in a raw egg to bind it and a little anchovy paste because I say so. Add a chopped onion just for the hell of it, then make little cakes of this shambles. Sprinkle some flour around the general area of the cakes and park some bread crumbs atop them. FRY IN DEEP FAT.
This time around I had half a bag of potatoes left over from a weekend in Margate, a dill plant on my window ledge that was about to expire, some sweetcorn going begging and I threw in some capers for a bit of a salty hit. I got some smoked mackerel out of the freezer (happy to discover you can freeze this with no ill effects) and as I didn’t have any anchovy paste, I chopped up a couple of anchovies from a jar and shoved those in. Oh, and a couple of spring onions a little past their use by date, plus the egg.
Result – three x 2 big fishcakes which I ate over three days with samphire and Vietnamese salad also brought back from Margate. I was well pleased with myself, effectively creating 3 delicious meals almost totally made from leftovers. I felt like a total domestic goddess!
I heartily recommend having a go at David’s fishcakes. If I hadn’t already featured his Jannson’s Temptation in my top one hundred movie star recipes countdown, I would have put these in!
5 responses
Love it! I started watching a David Niven movie last night, and am just about to start finishing it off. Great to read this recipe right now.
“because I say so”
yes!
Ooh, which movie was it VT? I admit, I haven’t seen very many films starring David, but he’s always been fabulous. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Raffles…
It was A Matter of Life and Death. I thought it was okay, Niven was the best thing in it. It’s one of those movies with the “person expected in heaven, but something went wrong” plots, which I generally find a bit less than exciting. I think I saved it for watching basically because there’s a Lancaster bomber in it, and one of my grandpa’s was on one of those… I’d had it stashed away at the bottom of my “to be viewed” list for about a year and a half.
Yeah, I’m not mad on that movie either! Although I do love Kathleen Byron – she’s on my “most wanted” recipe list. Have you seen Black Narcissus? Another Powell and Pressburger but IMHO a masterpiece! Coming soon to Dinner and a Movie I reckon…
Oh, yes, I’ve seen it but it’s been ages, yummy choice!