A welcome combination of my recipes for potato cakes and sardine fritters, these Sardine Fish Cakes provide yet another inexpensive way of fitting fish into a frugal diet. Trust me, these cakes really are the perfect way to see out a hard week at work, served alongside a wedge of lemon, a hearty portion of chips and a ramekin of tartare sauce.
Potato cakes are the last word in frugality. Any dish that takes leftover mash and transforms it into a different meal entirely – with the help of only a handful of extra ingredients – deserves a great deal of praise indeed. Of course, you may wish to serve your Gluten Free Potato Cakes with a little something else – smoked mackerel is a particular favourite – but they are just as satisfying with a side salad or slaw.
It’s rather surprising that a recipe for Potato Bread hasn’t yet been featured here. I’ve long been a proponent of this frugal root vegetable, so this is a truly inexcusable oversight. Indeed, the entire concept is one that is incredibly appealing; it’s clear that this is one loaf of bread that is going to possess flavour in prodigious quantity, in addition to a moist, pleasurable texture. Happily, this is one recipe that doesn’t disappoint, not that my recipes tend to do so, and is the perfect accompaniment to any soup or casserole.
Rösti has become a rather difficult thing to find in the restaurants and cafes of Britain. One could argue that the hash brown is a fairly common solution to this problem. However, there is something about the hash brown that screams ‘English fry-up’- it has not the class of the rather more delicate Swiss Rösti. I can almost smell the sense of disbelief in the fact that you have just witnessed me, a relatively staunch British traditionalist, at least when it comes to food, bash one of our own. However, what you must realise is that most traditional British food is part of a truly great culinary tradition and that I’m more than happy to bash what I perceive to be inferior. Perhaps I shall have to attempt to reinvent the hash brown – now there’s an idea.
I’m determined to get right back into blogging following the last 3 weeks of busyness. All the travelling about I’ve been doing has put a downer on things blog wise. However, now I’m back and settled – for the time being – in Aberystwyth I shall attempt to blog far more regularly. I make it sound like a chore – it really isn’t!
Today I went in search of food related inspiration which came in the form of my grandmother’s vast collection of BBC GoodFood magazines. I plucked this delectable recipe from the folds of one particularly useful copy, and suited it to my own uses. This was necessary because flageolet beans appear to be absolutely impossible to find, especially in west Wales. However, I must recommend this dish, as it is absolutely beautiful. It manages to be both hearty and not too wintery at the same time, which means it’s a perfect soup for this time of year. This is perhaps because it doesn’t contain any meat and therefore lacks the richness of a beefy broth.