Deanna’s Recipe of the Week #7 Smoked Salmon Fishcakes

Oh you lucky people! Deanna's clearly gone bonkers, and is allowing one of our best recipes to be published online! The North Star Smoked Salmon Fish Cakes have been on our menu since the day we opened and remain both a top seller and perennial favourite with customers who can cause a stir if we've sold out. And these babies sell out faster than we can make them!

The key ingredient, by the way, is the flaky hot smoked salmon from the Salar Smokehouse up in the Orkney's - a producer with a string of accolades and famous admirers. We order whole sides of this delicious product to cook with, though we often have it available in retail packs too. Their web site has some truly mouth-watering recipes, but here's one of Deanna's very own!

Smoked Salmon Fishcakes

We make these in quite large quantities so I've tried to scale it down a bit. This should make about eight or nine. Incidentally, they freeze well, so it's worth making more than you need as the smell of frying fishcakes does pervade the home somewhat. Spot the understatement! You will need :-

1 pack of Salar Smoked Salmon
Approx 1.5kg potatoes (use a relatively dry one like Marphona)
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
20g Butter
1 tbsp creamed horseradish
1 bunch spring onion, chopped finely
About 25g chopped flat leaf parsley

Plain flour to coat
2 beaten eggs
Breadcrumbs (make your own by toasting unwanted crusts of bread to dry them out and blitzing them in a food processor)

Vegetable oil for frying

Method : Peel the potatoes, cut into medium sized chunks and put them in a pan of cold water with some salt. Cover with a lid, bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes until tender. Drain immediately in a colander and put them back in the pan. Whilst they are still warm, mash them together thoroughly with the butter, lemon juice and rind and the horseradish.

Leave until they are cool enough to handle. Stir in the spring onions, chopped parsley and flaked smoked salmon. Mix thoroughly. Weigh out the mix into 150g balls, press them down slightly and place them on a baking tray.

Prepare 3 containers, one with flour, one with beaten egg, and one with breadcrumbs. Coat a fishcake with flour with one hand, use the other hand to dip it in the egg, and use the first hand to roll it in the breadcrumbs - this way, you don't end up with big breadcrummy fingers! We call this game "Wet Hand, Dry Hand". Carry on until all the fishcakes are coated.

Pour the oil into a wide pan so it reaches a level equal to half way up the fishcake. Turn on the heat. When you think it may be hot enough (about 180 degrees) pop in a breadcrumb. If it starts to bubble and comes to the surface, it's ready. Fry the fishcakes in batches on both sides - make sure there's enough room to turn them. They should be a nice golden brown. Drain them on a baking tray covered with kitchen roll to absorb any extra oil.

Note - you could vary this recipe by substituting half the potato for sweet potato, the salmon for cooked smoked haddock, the lemon for lime and the parsley for coriander. There you go - that's two recipes for the price of one!!!

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