The skills needed for this dinner party dish are making a roux sauce and the ruff puff pastry – or in this case, the easy ‘cheat’ way of doing it...
Ingredients
For the cheat's flaky pastry:
- 225 g8 oz plain flour
- 35 g1¼ oz parmesan cheese
- ½ tsp salt
- unsalted butter, kept in the freezer for one hour
- 120 ml4¼ fl oz ice-cold water
For the fish pie filling:
- 150 g5¼ oz pollock fillet
- 300 g10½ oz smoked haddock
- 200 g7 oz salmon fillet
- 100 g3½ oz raw prawns, peeled and deveined
- 600 ml21 fl oz whole milk
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 small onion, thinly sliced
- Small pinch of saffron
- 5 peppercorns
- 2 tbsp butter
- 3 leeks, finely sliced
- 2 tbsp flour
- 100 ml3½ fl oz vermouth
- 500 ml17½ fl oz milk stock that fish has been poached in, drained of bits
- 100 ml3½ fl oz double cream
- 8 large fresh scallops, with or without roes
- 2 tbsp parsley, chopped
- A good grating of nutmeg
- Flour, for dusting
- 1 quantity of flaky pastry, from above
- 1 large free-range egg yolk
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method: How to make Luxury fish pie
For the flaky pastry (makes 450g):
Sift the flour and parmesan into a bowl with the salt. Using a large-holed cheese grater, grate in the butter as fast as you can so that it doesn’t melt.
Take a metal knife and delicately coat the butter strands in flour until all the strands are coated and the butter is spread evenly throughout the flour. Add the ice-cold water and bind together with the knife.
On a floured surface, bring the pastry together into a ball. Try not to handle it too much as you want to keep the butter strands from melting, and handling pastry too much makes it tough.
Roll the pastry into a long oblong shape, then fold one-third over into the centre and the other third over the top of that.
Cover in clingfilm, then leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes or until needed.
For the filling:
Find a pan or roasting tray that can be used on the hob that is big enough to take all the fish. Place the fish into the pan skin side up and then cover with the cold milk, bay, peppercorns, onion, and saffron.
Bring to the boil then immediately turn off the heat. Leave the fish for 5 minutes and drain off the liquid, reserving it for later (to make the white sauce). Also remove the aromatics (the onion, bay and peppercorns) from the fish, although the saffron strands are fine to leave in. When the fish is cool enough to touch, break it up into large feathery bite-sized pieces, leaving the prawns whole.
Melt the butter in a medium-sized pan. Add the leeks and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes, or until softened.
Tip in the flour and cook for a minute (this will make the sauce less floury). Add the vermouth, then slowly add the milk from the fish and the cream and simmer for one minute. Stir in the parsley and season with salt, pepper and a good grating of nutmeg.
Pour the flaked fish and raw scallops into a medium pie dish, and then pour over the sauce and leave to cool for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, flour the kitchen surface and roll out the pastry. Using your pie dish as a template, cut out a lid big enough to cover it. You really don’t need to be a neat freak when making your lid: I actually think the more wonky your lid, the better.
Then cut out some one-centimetre thin strips to run along the edge of the pie dishes in order to stick the lid to the dish.
Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas 6. Using a pastry brush, paint egg yolk round the edge of each pie dish and top them with a pastry lid.
Pierce each lid with a skewer and paint more egg yolk all over the lids.
Pop them back into the fridge for another 10 minutes (or all day if you like), then pop them into the oven for 30-35 minutes or until the pastry is cooked through and lovely and crisp and the filling is bubbling away inside.
Serve in the individual pie dishes, on a plate with mixed vegetables.
