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Fish Pi

A slight tweak on how Mother Dennison used to make it, to reflect lower skills with pastry… Yes, pastry; fish pie with mashed potato on top is also delicious but, round our way, that’s called Trawler Pie.

Ingredients
  • Two fillets unsmoked white fish 
  • Two fillets smoked white fish 
  • A big handful of frozen prawns
  • 1 litre milk
  • ~75g butter
  • Two dessert spoons of plain flour
  • Two Bay leaves
  • Some Tarragon
  • Garlic puree
  • Double handful of frozen peas
  • 2 pucks frozen spinach
  • Roll of puff pastry
Method
  1. Poach the fish fillets in the milk, with the bay leaves, tarragon, garlic puree and a hefty crack of salt and pepper. Basically any fish will work but make sure there’s some smoked fish in there as it adds the best flavour.
  2. After about 8 minutes, when the fish is flaky, turn off the heat and add the prawns and peas to help cool it all down.
  3. In a separate pan, make a roux of the butter and flour. Transfer the milk from the poaching pan a bit at a time to make a white sauce. If you’re adding the (optional) spinach, stir it into the sauce at this point until the pucks have melted into the sauce.
  4. Flake the fish filets into a pie dish with the prawns and the peas. Mum used to put in hard boiled egg as well but I don’t as my wife doesn’t like them… Pour over the white sauce, tapping it down to get it into the filling.
  5. Roll the pastry over the top, crimp the edge, cut a steam hole and decorate – ideally with a “Π” symbol because it’s hilarious. Egg / milk wash the pastry top.
  6. Bake at 180°C for about 25 minutes, until the pastry is golden.
  7. Serve with vegetables – sweetcorn and tenderstem broccoli are ideal.

If you want to be properly Dennison Family-authentic, let the filling cool before assembly. 
Roll out the pastry into a massive square and pour the filing onto it, shaping it into a diamond. 
Fold the corners of the pastry into the centre of the diamond and crimp the seams. You should end up with a square pie with four seams meeting in the centre. 
Serve each diner a quarter, cutting along the seams.

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