No Fishy Business

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Our artistic licence membership cards were pulled out once again this week to adapt the Bake-off theme of Danish week to a St Helenian inspired creation.  

St Helenian cuisine only really does one type of pastry, our beloved curry puff, so when the theme was announced, we had a long hard think about how to best adapt this to a Saint Cooks masterpiece.  

Rising to the challenge we dreamed up something fabulous that had just enough of a wink to the GBBO theme but made up with a lot of island flavour.    We decided to was time we celebrate one of the main pillars of St Helenian cooking…Fish. Mackerel to be more precise.

Mackerel is the star of many dishes on Island but where it shines the brightest is when it is stuffed.  St Helenian Stuffed Mackerel takes traditional fish cake mix and instead of turning it into cakes, it is stuffed back into the skins of the fish and fried to create a crispy parsel of goodness.  

Taking this dish, we made up a fish cake mix using fresh mackerel and instead encased it within buttery puff pastry.  Shaped into a enticing fish shape in honour of traditional danish pastries famous for their plaits and patterns.

We hold our hands up here and admit that we had to cheat a bit this week.  Our bake almost didn’t happen because we both have caught a really bad cold. But we didn’t want to let that beat us and decided to carry on but to conserve our energy use store bought puff pastry for our masterpiece.  Sorry to all the purist bakers out there but it had to be done this week.

Nonetheless, the Mackerel pastry parcels turned out a treat and tasted so good. We’re so proud of how the final product looked and taste.  

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Here’s how you make it:

Stuffed Mackerel Danish pastries

1 medium Mackerel, filleted and minced

1 medium potato (boiled and mashed

1 small onion, diced

Pasley

Chilli flakes

Salt & Pepper to taste

Mayo

Lemon juice

1 pack 500g Puff Pastry

Black olives

1 egg

1. Prep your fish and place to one side.  
2. Boil and mash the potatoes.
3. Mix together the raw fish, onion, parsley, and chilli flakes together with the mashed potato.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Set the mix aside and preheat your oven at 180C
5. Divide your pastry block into 4 and roll out each quarter to a 1 cm thick rectangle.
6. Spread a thin layer of lemon mayo down the middle of the rectangle and top with your fish potato mix.  
7. Using a sharp knife cut slits on both sides to create the ribbons that will form the braided fish body.
8. Leave a section at the top and bottom of the rectangle to form the head and folded tail.  Please see the video above of how to make your cuts.
9. Once the fish shape is made place a sliced black olive on the head for a eye and egg wash the pastry.
10. Baking for 15-18 minutes until golden brown.

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