Fast fish pie

Happy to report another success - a quick and easy meal that's turned out delicious and, this time, healthy. BBC Good Food's Fast Fish Pie lived up to its name.

The recipe starts with celery and garlic, adds fresh cherry tomatoes, then stock (or wine) and tomato puree along with the fish, plus tarragon to finish. I used mixed fish (hake, smoked haddock, salmon) rather than the white fish plus prawns in the recipe, and dill rather than tarragon as I had none in the cupboard. My stock is baby-friendly (low salt) Heinz but with the smoked fish it was fine. A good grinding of fresh black pepper finished things off beautifully.

I made cheesy mash without spring onions (again, none in and not worth buying just for one recipe), and served it with the fish mixture rather than making a pie. It means forgoing the crispy top, but you get your dinner quicker and have one less dish to wash up, so that's a win in my book.

I have to say that the 10 mins prep was a bit optimistic for me. Chopping celery, garlic and tomatoes, making stock, and prepping potatoes were just about quick enough, but skinning the fish and checking for bones was time consuming for a non-expert.

Update: to make it even faster I used fish pie mix and a tin of tomatoes, and swapped the normal tomato puree for a sun dried one (Sacla). I also chuck in some frozen peas.

In general it's a pretty healthy and diet-friendly dish. I didn't use as much oil as suggested, but braised the celery with some of the stock, and I could easily have omitted the cheese from the mash - in fact I mashed in some leftover cheese sauce from another dish, giving it good anti-food-waste credentials too. On that note, as the tomatoes and celery are cooked, you can use up ones that might be a bit too past their best to eat raw, and other veg such as carrots or broccoli stems could go in too. To give it a trio of haloes, it's also pretty budget-friendly as you can eke out the fish with more veg, and/or choose cheaper fish or even offcuts.

Overall, an extremely tasty dish, and one that can easily be batch cooked into larger portions. Definitely a keeper in our menu rotation!

Apple rescue

A few sad apples in the fruit bowl, half a pack of butter to use, and some eggs... apple cake, mmm :)

Who better to turn to than Delia? Spiced apple muffin cake.

Ingredients:

• 12 oz (350 g) Bramley apples (weight after peeling and coring), chopped into ½ inch (1 cm) cubes
• 4 oz (110 g) butter
• 10 oz (275 g) plain flour
• 1 level tablespoon plus 1 level teaspoon baking powder
• ½ level teaspoon salt
• 1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 level teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ whole nutmeg, grated
• 2 large eggs at room temperature
• 3 oz (75 g) golden caster sugar
• 6 fl oz (175 ml) milk

For the pecan streusel topping:

• 2 oz (50 g) pecan nuts, roughly chopped
• 3 oz (75 g) self-raising flour
• 3 oz (75 g) demerara sugar
• 1 rounded teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 oz (25 g) soft butter
• 1 tbsp cold water
  

Method:

Melt the butter and sieve the flour, all the baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cloves and grated nutmeg into a bowl.

Whisk the eggs, sugar and milk together, then whisk in the melted butter. Sieve the flour mixture (again) into the egg mixture and fold it gently until just mixed. Now fold in the chopped apple and then spoon the mixture into the tin.

To make the streusel add the flour, sugar and cinnamon and rub the butter in with your fingertips. Sprinkle in the nuts and 1 tablespoon cold water, then press the mixture loosely together. Spoon it over the surface of the cake, then bake on the centre shelf of the oven for about 1¼ hours, until it feels springy in the centre.

Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 30 minutes then finish on a rack.

The only mistake I made was to omit the water from the streusel, because it wasn't on Delia's ingredient list (I have added it). So I have a dusty crumble topped cake instead!