We love fish but it is very expensive. We therefore stretch it by making a fish pie. A pie will feed 4 people with one piece of fish, some vegetables, and a hand full of prawns. I like to have a bag of prawns in the freezer as for a small price I can put a handful into stir fry, a savoury rice, a paella, or in a pasta sauce. One bag will provide me with about 5 meals.
Ingredients
200g of fish or more if you have it (it can be any kind of fish, or a mix of different fish.,i usually do a bit of salmon, a bit of cod, and a bit of smoked fish).
a hand full of prawns
800g of potatoes or left over mashed potato. We do half sweet potato.
400ml of milk
25g butter
25g plain flour
A pinch of salt and pepper
A mixture of defrosted frozen vegetables ( I usually use peas, but use left over cooked vegetables sometimes).
A handful of grated hard cheese
1 tsp of mustard
Method
- In advance cook the fish in the milk in a saucepan. Once cooked let it all cool.
- Put the frozen prawns in cold water to defrost. I do both of these a few hours before.
- Cook the potatoes and mash and season if not using left over mashed potatoes
- Heat the oven to 180C (I cook mine in the air fryer if I have nothing else to do).
- Make the sauce by melting the butter in a saucepan, adding the flour and stirring quickly to a kind of paste, and then slowly add the milk whilst continually stirring until it boils and is the consistency that you want. Some people use a balloon whisk to do this.
- Add the cheese and mustard to the sauce and stir. If too thick add a bit more milk. Season with salt and pepper.
- Put the fish into the bottom of the dish and add the prawns and the vegetables. I often use individual lasagne dishes that I bought from the pound shop.
- Pour the sauce over
- Dot the potato over the top and then smooth over with a fork that makes a ribbed pattern.
- Scatter a bit of extra cheese on top if you wish
- Cook in the oven for 25 minutes or until the top is golden.
This year we had fish pie for our Christmas diuner. I put more fish in to it than normal as we were entertaining family.
Another way to make a cheap way to enjoy a different kind of fish pie is to to make a fish finger Pie
I love fish pie! Sometimes I add a little lemon juice and heavy cream to the poaching mixture to make a rich sauce! Heavy cream has almost doubled in price here, so it definitely is a “rich” sauce ;)
Yes, I would love to add cream but it is not in my budget. It has only gone up by about 25% luckily here. Thanks for sharing