Having received an extraordinary amount of potatoes from my nan's garden (I estimate 5 kilos), it has been a challenge to think of enough potato recipes to provide some variety. Last night, Shaun and I made fish pie. I've never done it before but I knew it's meant to be super easy, so no problem. Yep. You'd think that wouldn't you... especially if following a recipe labelled as easy on BBC GoodFoodRather than get separate fish, we just bought one of those fish pie mixtures from the supermarket. The poaching was fine, although I got a bit carried away with studding the onions with cloves. Bit of a mistake there BBC Goodfood, they do not make fish taste nice as I learnt to my detriment. Big fan of including hard boiled eggs though, they were a welcome change in texture and pad it out nicely on a budget. Making the white sauce was interesting to say the least. It may have been because we were using gluten free flour, but trying to blend the poaching milk into the butter and flour mixture was a nightmare. It was so stiff that in trying to stir it, the amount of vigorous activity necessary for success made it fly all over the hob. And although it tasted nice out of the pan, once cooked within the fish pie, it tasted underseasoned. Personally, I felt it would benefit from some roasted garlic, but that's more likely to be because I'm a garlic fiend than because it actually needs it.
But so far, although not perfect, it was turning out pretty tasty. However, the mash potato then happened. Oh dear. Potato puree, just for everyone's future reference, does not work on top of a fish pie. A very similar consistency to the white sauce, it simply merged into the pie and made what can only be described as tasty fish mush. We brought it back though with the addition of large amounts of grated mature cheddar on top, which once the pie was baked made it crunchy and delicious.
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