Fish pie

Creamy buttery soft smooth and silky Fish Pie 

 Coming back to food. Well my blog is about food and with my last post about insurance I feel it is time I get back to my culinary world. So when you have 3 wonderful friends for whom you arrange a dinner party the excitement begins with the planning itself. I usually love planning my menu weeks before but this time it was a quick set up and so on Monday everybody had decided on a meet and I was throwing a dinner party on Wednesday. To be quite frank with so many delicious dishes of varied cuisines floating around I was in trouble till I finally decided on a menu and so Fish pie it was as part of the dinner party because well I knew most of them love fish and well since winter has well lets be honest and say that it has waved goodbye the weather while mildly hot is yet to feel the full wrath of the Summers and so there are very days left to enjoy a rich creamy fish pie.

Finding a recipe was easy enough since I knew that it would be an English fish pie and so with the help of Mr.Martin's recipe which was twisted to suit the fresh ingredients of Calcutta (such as the salmon and cod was replaced by bhetki fish a soft boneless fish )this easy creamy delicious dish was ready within 1 hour 15 minutes taking preparation time and cooking time. While the amount of butter , cream and carbohydrate in this dish is not really very healthy per say but such divine taste needs to be indulged in at times and with the humidity and heat of the country you anyways have a few months of the years for such indulgences which are a definitely necessity. Its buttery , creamy with flaky soft fish and a culinary lover's absolute delight

4 to 5 servings

Potato Topping
900gm potatoes boiled
150ml double cream
60gm unsalted butter + 1 tbsp for greasing the baking dish
Pinch of nutmeg powder (preferably freshly grated)
Salt and pepper to taste

Fish layering
950gm fillet of Bhetki or any soft white boneless fish
3 tbsp unsalted butter
Juice of Half a lemon

Parsley sauce

1 tbsp flour
4 tbsp unsalted butter
200ml full cream milk
4 tbsp cream

Paprika sauce

1 tbsp flour
4 tbsp butter
200ml of full cream milk
4 tbsp cream
Half a tsp paprika

Start by bringing the milk to a boil and leaving it aside. What you do is boil and mash the potatoes with the other ingredients for potato topping and keep it aside. make ti smooth without any lumps. Now saute the fish so that it is just about softened in butter. You will be left with some fish juice in the pan. Grease your baking dish and put half your fish in the bottom layer and squeeze some lemon juice on it and pour the fish juice left in the pan.

Parsley Sauce 

Make your parsley sauce by melting the butter but definitely not browning it and adding the parsley and then when the flavour fills your kitchen add the flour and form the roux by simply using a spatula to mix the flour with the butter but do not let it brown even one bit. Now slowly add the milk bit by bit stirring continuously so that you have a smooth silky sauce without any lumps. Once the milk has been incorporated add the cream whisk a bit and poor the thick silky sauce on top of the fish in the baking dish. Now arrange the remaining fish and prepare the Paprika sauce

Make the paprika sauce the same way as the parsley sauce by simply replacing the parsley with paprika and then pour on top of the layered fish. Now top this with the mashed potatoes.

Preheat oven to 200 c and bake for 50 minutes if using convection oven or else 40 minutes for regular ovens or OTGs

Believe me your guests will be charmed and wouldn't be able to stop saying 'OOh Aaah lovely , fantastic, so creamy' I say such indulgences should be made compulsory