smoked mackerel and coconut fishcakes

We've decided yet again to try and eat more fish, and to do it in a more Milo and wallet-friendly manner. After all, there's only so many times you can get your essential oils from two sorts of fish curry, particularly as they involve either the expensive haddock, or the very expensive sea bass.

Having been encouraged by it back at the tail-end of the summer, I give Anna Hansen's fish cakes another spin, this time for the McCarthy audience. With this in mind I paid close attention to the mistakes of last time:

• I make slightly smaller cakes this time, and let them sit in the fridge for about half-an-hour, which really firms them up;
• I buy a big 500g bag of spinach (it was on offer), knowing it'll shrink to nowt in the blink of an eye;
• And I poach the eggs just so!

I am a winner.

It doesn't look much, but the cakes are surprisingly filling, so you only really need two for a decent dinner (although I have three). The only down point was I've discovered I do *not* have the asbestos fingers of a professional chef when I suffer first degree burns to my middle finger turning the cakes over in the pan. I have a blister instead.

Food of the Milos
As it's raining this morning I get to rest my knackered knees as Ana drives us to Julia's. Quite why we both have to go I don't know, but he insists. He has toast and Phili for breakfast and a rice cake on the way to nursery, followed by pasta and two yoghurts for lunch. Strangely he decides he doesn't eat courgette, or onion or tomatoes at dinner, which is a shame as they made up about 3/4 of his ratatouille. He still ate it all though, albeit with Ana shoveling it into his gaping maw whilst he watched The Octonauts.

Note to the makers of The Octonauts - could you hurry up and release toys and DVDs and the like? Every child I know is obsessed by them.

sources
tea-smoked salmon and coconut fishcakes - Anna Hansen, Delicious, August 2010, p62