Fish Cakes

3 Medium potatoes (about double the amount of fish)
200 grams Smoked Kingfish
1 red onion (half)
Handful of Parsley
1 teaspoon Hot English mustard
1 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
Salt to season

• Peel and boil the potatoes until tender.
• Finely dice the onion, and place half in a bowl, and set the other half aside for the horseradish creme below.
• Add chopped parsley, the mustard and paprika to the bowl, and flake in the fish, make sure you have some nice chunks.
• Use a mouli or ricer to purée the potatoes, do this in a separate bowl as you don’t want to add hot potato to the fish.
• When the potato is cool enough to handle, mix it into the fish and season with salt.
• Take a handful of the potato mix and push it into a floured ring mould, use the back of a spoon to pack it down.
• Carefully remove the cake from the mould and dust with flour, place on a sheet pan.
• Cool the cakes in the fridge for 10–15 minutes, so they can firm up.
• In a heavy pan pour enough oil to come up about 1 cm, I use rice bran oil as it has a decent smoke point and neutral flavour. When the oil is up to temperature, about 180ºC, carefully place the cakes in the oil and cook until golden on both sides.

Horseradish cream
Half a tub of Crème fraîche
2 Tablespoons Salted capers, rinsed
Half a red onion, finely diced
2 Tablespoons Horseradish
Juice of 1 Lemon
Salt to season

Dice up the rinsed capers and mix all ingredients together in a bowl, adjust the seasoning with salt and extra lemon juice if needed, let it sit for a 10 minutes or so, so the flavours can meld and develop.

Pickled Vegetables
Spring onion
Fennel Bulb
Cider vinegar
Olive Oil

Slice up spring onions, dice the fennel bulb, mix together in a bowl with a splash of cider vinegar and olive oil, easy huh.

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Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science public lecture series has started up for 2012, the videos of the lectures, past and present, are available on iTunes. They are informative and entertaining.

I’ve also been having good fun searching my way through google books and google scholar, it’s a treasure trove of cooking and food related information, from 60s magazine recipes to the 1825 treatise The physiology of taste: or, Transcendental gastronomy, which is an interesting read.