Prawn and Smoked Cod Fishcakes

These fishcakes are a bit more grown-up than my kid-friendly version thanks to the smoked cod and capers. Cooking the potatoes fresh means I can control the texture to make fishcakes with crispy knobbly bits rather than a one-dimensional mush. You can freeze the cooked fishcakes if you want to make a big batch in one go.

INGREDIENTS
Serves 2 Adults & 2 Kids
500g mashing potatoes
200g frozen smoked cod
200g frozen unsmoked cod
100g frozen cooked prawns
40g capers
40g Dijon mustard
small bunch of chives
1 tbsp flour
50ml veg oil and 50g butter for frying
chives and lemon to finish
for the crispy coating
100g golden breadcrumbs
2 eggs
100 plain flour

• Take the fish and prawns out of the freezer and put the prawns into a bowl of tap water to defrost.
• Peel the potatoes and cut into 3cm cubes then in a large pan cover them in cold, salted water and bring to a gentle boil. The potatoes should be par boiled (still firm in the centre) after 7 minutes from boiling. Drain the potatoes then return them to the pan to cool and dry out.
• Once dry use a fork to gently crush the potatoes (you don’t want mash, you just want to break the cubes so they can grip to the fish mixture).

• The fish should be thawed enough to cut into 3cm chunks. Put the chunks into a pan with a lid on and cook over a medium heat for 2 minutes. The water in the fish will steam cook the cod.
• Drain the excess liquid then put the fish into a large mixing bowl and add the defrosted and drained prawns, capers, mustard and chopped chives to the fish.
• Add the potatoes to the mixing bowl and sprinkle over a tablespoon of plain flour then gently combine everything.

• Put the flour, breadcrumbs and whisked eggs into three separate bowls. Heat the oil and butter in a large skillet over a medium high heat then carefully form the fish mixture into cakes without squashing the ingredients.
• Coat in the flour first, then the egg then the breadcrumbs then into the pan to fry until golden brown then gently turn over to cook the other side. Turn down the heat if the pan is getting too hot.
• Remove the cooked fishcakes to kitchen roll to remove excess oil then serve up and squeeze over the lemon.