Studio Ghibli Month, Fish Cottage Pie
Prep time: ~ Hour and 20 minutes Bake Time: 25-30 minutes
From Kiki’s Delivery Service, we went for something ambitious. This has a lot of parts to work together, or so I thought. It turned out easier than expected, but this baked pie was pretty, darn tasty. Kiki makes this with herring and delivers it in a lovely picnic basket. I used tilapia and had it in a glass pan and that was it. I’m not as elaborate as this young witch but hey, teach me magic and I’ll buy a damn picnic basket for the authenticity.
Ingredients
3 eggs
3 cups milk
1 tablespoon cornstarch
5 russet potatoes, medium sized
1 leek
1 carrot
1 onion
2 pie crusts
1 tbls salt
1 tbls pepper
2 tbls stone ground mustard
2 cups spinach
2 bay leaves
3 fillets of white fish (I used tilapia, cod or more work too)
Prep
Preheat the oven to 350 F
Boil a pot of water
While waiting on the water, slice the potatoes relatively thin. Add them to the pot of boiling water
After 5 minutes of boiling add 2 of the eggs to the water to hard boil them
Boil all of this for 10 minutes
While this is boiling, slice all your vegetables (not the bay leaves, come on)
In a deep enough pan on the stove, heat it to about medium
When the pan is warm, add a touch of oil and let it warm up a bit
Add the veggies and the bay leaves to start sautéing them
Take the eggs out of the potato water and run them under some cool or cold water to cool them
Strain the potatoes and add them to a bowl. Use whatever you want to mash these up. I used a fork cause it’s what I have and it’s easy.
Add 2/3 cup of milk to this potato mixture and stir it all up nice and good
Take a 9x13 in casserole/baking dish and add 4/5 of the potatoes to it. You want to have about the perceived amount of maybe one potato left
Add the last 2 1/3 cups of milk, salt, pepper, hard boiled eggs (sliced), and mustard to what’s left of the potatoes and mix it up
Add it to the pan with the veggies (hopefully you have room cause you gotta stir)
Do your best to not lose track of the bay leaves
You’ll want this on medium heat and the milk will start to boil which will help it thicken
If it doesn’t seem to be thickening, add the cornstarch to help it thicken
While this is thickening, (stir it sometimes so a film doesn’t really take root and ruin your textures), take the fish you chose and slice it into strips
Take the bay leaves out (this is why you wanted to keep an eye on these suckers)
Pour it over the mashed potatoes in the casserole dish
Add the strips of fish to cover the top or however you want it to look
Take the pie crust and cut it into slices, leaving 1 half uncut
Add these strips to the top of the casserole covering it as best you can
The last half you saved, try to slice out a fish shape
Lay this fish in the center for a design
Use whats left to fill in gaps in the coverage
Take the last egg and beat it in a bowl
Use a brush to cover the crust in an egg wash
Bake for at least 27 minutes
Afterthoughts
I loved this. It was more liquid than I originally envisioned but that didn’t matter. The tastes, while not what I’m used to, went well together. Except one major thing. The original piece I was following wanted 2 tbls of salt and pepper and it was just too much pepper. It was too much a punch in the face. I’m toning it down in this recipe. I also changed the times and added the corn starch as the milk was not thickening on it’s own. However, the rest tasted really good. The potatoes were the perfect calmer to the mustard and pepper and the fish cooked wonderfully. Tilapia is complemented well with the mustard mixture. This takes basically 2 hours to get together but is worth the wait. It was a lot of fun and really kicks your taste buds awake. A filling dinner and fun dish that brings a hodgepodge of tastes together in a magical, playful way.
