Corinna and Cathy are GOOD SPORTS when they come round to my house for dinner. They probably know that something weird is going to be served up.

Gourmet food Tessie’s fishcake was not. Fishcake singular you note, even though it serves four. Basically, you make a big old mixture of whatever tinned fish you have to hand, a few hard-boiled eggs, some onion, cooked and chopped up green beans, mayo, vinegar and beaten egg. Stick it in a frying pan…

When it is cooked on one side, you steel yourself to flip it over (or in my case, ask Cathy to do it). I overcooked this a bit but we all agreed that it tasted good!

It was “very 1970s” but good.

I proclaimed that liked it, but that I probably wouldn’t be making it again, and Cathy said that she wouldn’t be asking me for the recipe, which always makes me laugh.

I was very proud of my blackberry and apple pie though. Made to an excellent Felicity Cloake recipe with apples and blackberries foraged from the communal garden. I’m planning to make one of these every year from now on so I’m linking to her recipe online so that I can find it again next autumn. Corinna fashioned the apple.

Tessie’s recipe was tested as part of the #HappyFoodYear challenge over on Twitter. I have pledged to make one recipe a month from the Tessie O’Shea Slimming Cookbook and so far they have all been pretty bonkers.

This month was the Fish chapter, and unlike the Soup chapter there were lots of things I liked the look of. But Tessie’s Big Fishcake (as I have renamed it) won the day.

Here’s Tessie posing with a fish…

I do this a lot too, not sure if that’s because I saw Tessie doing it…

and should you wish to make a big old potato free fishcake, here’s the recipe!

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