A critic cooks: Fay Maschler's recipe for fishcakes

Caught up in a victimless conflict: Fay Maschler recalls the Great Fishcake War of the early 1980s
Adrian Lourie
Fay Maschler11 June 2020

When I was 12, my family moved to the US. My father was opening the New York office of a British engineering company. Navigating a long, lonely summer holiday without friends to hang out with – school hadn’t started – I turned to cooking to occupy myself.

Using Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and other somewhat archaic recipe collections belonging to my mum – including the unwisely named Radiation Cookery Book, produced by the makers of New World gas stoves – I found that if you followed the instructions faithfully then even quite complicated items like meringues and puff pastry turned out well. And I enjoyed turning the tables on my parents by more or less obliging them to eat what I had made.

I carried on cooking, snaring boyfriends and then a first husband – the second was beguiled by other things – but more importantly understanding the potency and amiability in the necessity of providing. I wrote cookery books, three for children starting with Cooking is a Game You Can Eat, and serendipitously won the competition run by the Evening Standard when, in 1972, they were looking for a new restaurant critic

Restaurants multiplied. As children left home, my domestic life changed and I cooked less often. When darling Reg died two years ago I found making meals just for myself unrewarding and restaurants continued to proliferate and diversify until there seemed somewhere new to try practically every day. And then lockdown; I am back cooking on a daily basis, although recently it is interspersed with tempting takeaway that independent restaurants are making available.

Today marks the start of a weekly recipe column derived from my own collection, with links in some cases to London restaurants past and present. They are easygoing ideas, deliberately not prescriptive and innocent of recherché ingredients that may not be close to hand – which at the moment is useful if not madly fashionable. Because my sister Beth, with whom I often cook, has sweetly and kindly moved in with me for lockdown thereby saving my mental bacon it is fitting to start with this recipe for her fishcakes.

Beth's fishcakes

You may not remember The Great Fishcake War of the early 1980s. Fishcakes, that consoling nursery dish, had made a comeback on chic menus and credit for the fact was claimed by my sister Beth Coventry, who was cooking at Green’s in St. James’s, and also by Charles Fontaine, then chef of Le Caprice nearby. Try to imagine whose side I was during this harrowing, victimless conflict. Now that Beth has her own gastropub she has to persuade her chef to put fishcakes on the menu because, when he does, hardly anything else gets ordered. So make your own, and choose something different from the takeaway menu that The Wells Tavern in Hampstead is currently offering.

Time to prepare and cook: 45 minutes

You will need: white fish and smoked fish – the sustainable species pollack is now available smoked – potatoes, spring onions, eggs, milk, flour, breadcrumbs.

Method

  • Use twice as much fish by weight as potatoes. Peel the potatoes, boil until soft, drain and mash with pepper, salt and nutmeg. 
  • Poach the two kinds of fish in milk for 4 or 5 minutes or until they are opaque and flake easily when you have removed them from the milk. 
  • Slice some trimmed spring onions finely and mix with the fish and potatoes. If you have parsley to hand, some of that well-chopped is good stirred in.  
  • Add a whole beaten egg, or just the yolk, if you have a small amount of mixture. 
  • Use your hands to get everything well integrated and shape the mixture into small cakes. Flour them lightly and fry in hot oil until golden and heated through. Better still, flour them, turn them in another beaten egg and coat with breadcrumbs before frying. 
  • A home-made tomato sauce makes a fine accompaniment, but so does ketchup or tartare sauce.

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