Two in a row about soft foods. I do like steak, honest.
My dad went and got his sore finger poked and prodded at on Wednesday and came home with a bandage on it the size of a small football. Bear with a sore paw, we called him. When he’d said that morning that “there’s fish pie for tea”, I thought, great, and then thought nothing more of it. Then all of a sudden he was going out and eating the sandwich in the fridge for his supper and I was in charge of making the fish pie for my mum and I.
She got in, spread her snowy boots around the kitchen, saved my béchamel sauce from being a huge clump of butter and flour - would you believe I’ve never a made a white sauce before? (and do believe that you should always make sure the pan is dry before you start on the roux) - and then told me that fish pie was her favourite food. I’m 23 years old and I never knew that; I could probably count the times I’ve had fish pie with her on both of my hands. Without wishing to get over sentimental (and I’m all too aware that this is essentially a sentimental blog about food, so maybe I’m past that), there’s something comforting about making your mum’s favourite meal for her when she’s just lost her own mum. Especially, I thought, when it’s fish pie. I tried to describe why in terms of textures but I sounded like a wanker, just like I do when I talk about all that stuff about families looking after each other. You know. The smoothness of the sauce and the mashed potato sort of blending together, only broken up by flakes of fish. I left out the hard boiled eggs that the recipe recommended. Not my taste.
Anyway, it wasn’t half bad. I tried pushing the potatoes through a sieve for the first time in order to get absolutely no lumps - bloody hard work but absolutely worth it. If anyone wants to get me a potato ricer for Christmas, please feel free. And then the next night my girlfriend rings with a tale of salmon fillets and wintery foods and friends round for dinner, long story short, can you make another fish pie please? Two fish pies in two days. Making the second one I felt like an old hand. Ta, Leiths.
