Jono & Jules do food & wine

Sometimes the less complicated recipes are the best. Our fish pies usually have all sorts of stuff inside but this white fish, egg and parsley sauce combo was delicious. Perfect comfort food.

Fish Pie – to serve 4 

• 1 small onion, thickly sliced
• 2 cloves
• 1 bay leaf
• 600ml milk
• 300ml double cream
• 450g unskinned cod or haddock fillet
• 225g undyed smoke cod or haddock fillet
• 4 eggs
• 100g butter
• 45g plain flour
• 5 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
• freshly grated nutmeg
• 1.25kg floury potatoes, peeled
• 1 egg yolk
• salt and freshly ground white pepper

Push the cloves into a couple of the onion slices. Put the onion into a large pan with a bay leaf, 450ml of the milk, all of the cream, and fish. Bring just to a boil and them simmer gently for 8 minutes. Lift the fish out with a slotted spoon and strain the cooking liquid into a jug. When the fish is cool enough to handle, break it into big flakes, discarding the skin and any bones. Sprinkle the fish over the base of a shallow 1.75 litre ovenproof dish.

Hard-boil the eggs for 8 minutes, then drain and leave to cool in cold water (so you don’t get ugly black rings). Peel and cut into chunky slices and arrange then on top of the fish.

Melt 50g of the butter in a pan, add the flour and cook for 1 minute. Take the pan off the heat and gradually stir in the reserved liquid. Return it to the heat and bring to the boil slowly, stirring all the time. Leave it to simmer gently for 10 minutes to thicken and cook out the flour. Remove from the heat again, stir in the parsley and season with nutmeg, salt and white pepper. Pour the sauce over the fish and leave to cool. Chill in the fridge for 1 hour.

Boil the potatoes until tender. Drain, mash and add the rest of the butter and the egg yolk. Season with salt and white pepper and beat in enough of the milk to form a soft mash that you can spread.

Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas 6. Spoon the potato over the filling and mark the surface with a fork. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until piping hot and golden brown.

Wine Suggestion: keep it simple and try a dry and minerally Muscadet. There are some great examples of Muscadet around at the moment and for not much money so it’s worth a try with any other seafood too.

(Original recipe from Rick Stein’s Seafood, BBC Books, 2001.)