AirFryday: A very British fish pie — peas, cheese and all

And here we are. We seem to have made it to the last day of Thrifty January, and if you took my advice a week ago and pushed through with one final week of thrifty recipes, you should be in a good position to face February – short and (we hope) sweet as it is – and the rest of the year.

The most expensive element in this very satisfying fish pie – and it’s a “pie” in the British sense of one with a topping of mashed potato, like a cottage or shepherd’s pie – is probably the frozen fish fillets. 

Of course, you can use fish freshly plucked from the sea if you are lucky enough to have access to that. But frozen fish is just fine for this pie. The fillets just need to be thawed and allowed to drain a little (frozen fish gets a bit waterlogged). I would gently squeeze out excess water.

With any pie, there are various elements to its preparation. This recipe starts with use of the stove top, and is finished in the air fryer.

The fish fillets are poached for just two minutes in a stock of milk with onion and bay leaves. Mashed potato is prepared, and when you stir in the milk and butter and seasoning, you also stir in grated cheese.

The milk you used for poaching the fish fillets is used again to make a white sauce, to which the peas are added.

Finally, this dish requires a reasonably large air fryer basket. As long as you have a dish that fits the basket and is deep enough to hold all the layers of ingredients, it will work. Don’t be fazed – I find that there’s usually a solution. It’s just a matter of trying your various dishes out for size in an air fryer basket and using the one that will fit and is deep enough to hold these layers. If you need to use a smaller quantity of the ingredients stated below, that’s fine too. You could use, say, four fish fillets, four potatoes, a smaller onion, and fewer peas.

Tony’s air fryer fish pie

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

For the fish:

2 cups/ 500ml full cream milk

1 medium onion, peeled and sliced

3 bay leaves

6 medium hake fillets (3 fillets per layer)

For the sauce:

3 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp flour

⅔ of a cup of frozen peas

The milk from poaching the fish

Salt and white pepper to taste

For the potatoes:

6 medium to large potatoes, peeled and quartered

3 Tbsp butter

3 Tbsp full cream milk

½ a cup of Cheddar cheese, grated

Salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Peel the potatoes and add them to a pot of well-salted water. Put it on a high heat and boil the potatoes until soft, about 15 to 20 minutes. Drain through a colander. Keep aside to be continued later.

Pour the milk into a large, fairly deep pan (I used my Le Creuset buffet, which is ideal). Add the sliced onions and bay leaves, and season with salt and white pepper.

Put the hake fillets in this and bring the milk to a gentle simmer, not allowing it to boil violently, which may cause the fish to disintegrate.

After two minutes, turn off the heat. Wait another 20 minutes for the flavours of bay and onion to further infuse the fish.

Place a colander over a wide-brimmed jug, for the milk to go into the jug and the colander to catch everything else. Discard the bay leaves but keep the onion. This milk will be used to make your cheese sauce.

Now, back to the potatoes. Put the empty pot back on the stove, on a moderate heat, and mash the potatoes in it. Season with salt and pepper. Add the milk and butter, and continue mashing and stirring until you have nice smooth mashed potato.

Add about two-thirds of the grated cheese and stir it into the mashed potato. Retain the remainder for sprinkling on top of the dish before baking it.

Take the jug of milk (the milk you cooked the fish in) to the stove. Melt the butter in a pan, take it off the heat, and briskly stir in the flour. Slowly add the milk while stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens. Stir the peas and the cooked onions into this (from the colander, remember), season with salt and white or black pepper, cook gently for a few minutes while stirring, and turn off the heat. This layer is ready.

Choose a dish that will fit into your air fryer (this dish requires a fairly sizable air fryer basket). Butter the bottom and sides of the dish.

Add a layer of half of the sauce (the one containing the peas), and three fish fillets.

Add a layer of the remaining sauce and the other three fish fillets.

Top with the mashed potato. If you want to be fancy about it, pipe the mash through a bag with a hole cut in one corner.

Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.

Preheat the air fryer to 160°C.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Check, and if the cheesy topping is not yet molten and golden, turn the heat up to 180°C and bake for another 5 minutes or until the topping is perfect. It won’t come to any harm if you cook it for 10 minutes at 180°C at this stage.

Here’s an important tip: let the fish pie stand for 20 minutes before serving. This will give it time to “set”, as it were, so that you can shape neater servings. Like the one in the picture. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023

Order Tony’s book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.