In My Week In Food 5 Jan 2020, I write about making fish cakes with leftover roast cod tail. The mix is approximately equal amounts of fish and leftover mashed potato with chopped flat leaf parsley, an egg yolk, salt and pepper. The mix made 5 plump fishcakes. I floured them, dipped them in leftover beaten egg white then dusted them with breadcrumbs. Chilling, covered with a drape of clingfilm, is sensible; it will firm them up and make handling easier. The cakes could be kept thus for 24 hours then fried in a decent splash of hot vegetable oil to brown the surfaces then left in a hot oven (180C) to finish heating through, leaving plenty of time to make this sauce. A similar fish cake recipe, incidentally, Cornish Sea Trout Fish Cakes is posted in Recipes. The sauce is very quick and simple and inspired by the sorrel sauce they used to serve (and possibly still do) at Le Caprice with a single, big salmon fish cake. It’s served under or around the fish cakes and turns the cakes into a luscious dish, perfect with a few oven chips. Try it too with sausages or with prawns or torn chicken added before it is spooned over butter-tossed short pasta.
Serves 2
Prep: 5 minutes
Cook: 10 minutes
100g young spinach leaves
40g butter
½ tbsp flour
250ml milk
nutmeg
squeeze lemon
Chose a lidded sauté/frying pan and melt 25g butter in the pan over a medium-low heat. Add the rinsed and drained spinach, stirring what seems a huge amount to encourage it to wilt. When floppy and very juicy, quickly melt the remaining butter in a medium pan. Scoop the spinach out of the pan to the fresh butter, stir, sift the flour over the top, stirring briskly until absorbed. Stir in the milk, stirring whilst adjusting the heat so the creamy sauce and spinach amalgamate. Simmer gently, stirring, for a couple of minutes or so to cook the flour. Add salt to taste – milk is surprisingly sweet – then season lavishly with nutmeg. Add a squeeze of lemon just before serving.