Fish: make-at-home fishcakes

Why order fishcakes in a restaurant when you can make them so easily at home?

What better treat than to go out to dinner and be spoiled with some complex and impressive creation you wouldn’t think of making yourself? That’s not always so easy these days. Increasingly, restaurants are offering dishes you used to eat at home because your mother made them; things like shepherd’s pie, bread-and-butter pudding and fishcakes. The glitterati of London, New York and Hollywood pack into The Ivy just for the fishcakes, one of Gary Rhodes’ most popular recipes.

But we’re not talking here of those flat disks of the seventies, coated in sandy breadcrumbs the orangey colour of George Hamilton’s face, and deep-frozen in packs of 20. These are fishcakes made specially to be fishcakes – light and fluffy, stuffed with flavour. They are so easy to make, it seems pointless to eat them anywhere but at home. Restaurants should be kept for savouring dishes you haven’t the inclination or the experience to cook yourself.There are two schools of thought about whether you should use fresh or tinned fish. You can actually use either. The best fresh fish for fishcakes are cod, haddock or hake. The best tinned is salmon. Then you add mashed potato, usually in a proportion of 4 medium-sized potatoes to 500g fish. After that, it’s up to you. You can add peas, sweetcorn, parsley, spring onions, anchovy fillets, hard-boiled eggs (all well chopped), capers, lemon zest, nutmeg, paprika – the list goes on. Steer clear, though, of an ingredient that will make the potato soggy, like tomato.