This month, James Martin has sent our MN Potato Councillors another of his delicious recipes, created especially for manyfacesofpotatoes.co.uk - Fish Cakes with Lemon & Basil Mayonnaise, ready in 30 minutes from prep to plate. The Councillors have been challenged to cook the dish for their families and share their feedback on this thread.
Manyfacesofpotatoes.co.uk say "This is the final thread for the MN Potato Councillors, so we've decided to add a bit of a twist and we're asking that our Councillors' children get stuck in too! Of course health and safety is everyone's number one priority, so we're not asking that they boil the potatoes or fry off the cakes, but getting them involved with the prep, like mashing the spuds or folding the mixture, could be lots of fun".
What's more, they are asking that, where possible, the Councillors post feedback on this thread on behalf of their children too. Please let us know: whether they enjoyed making the dish with you and what they thought of the taste.
As always, we want to give the entire MN community, and in this case your children too, the option to taste and review James' fish cakes so, even if you're not one of our MN Potato Councillors, feel free to try James' dish this week and add your feedback on this thread. If you are unable to try it please let us know your own fishcake recipe or share what you would normally serve them with.
Do tell us: how easy it was to cook, whether your family enjoyed it and if you added your own twist to the cakes - maybe you already have your very own family favourite fish cake flavour?
If you have any questions on potatoes, please post them onto the thread and we'll endeavour to answer them asap.
Everyone who does so will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £50 Love2Shop voucher.
Thanks, MNHQ
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AnnMumsnet · 16/03/2012 11:13
Ann, your mayo recipe says 1 egg - is this the whole egg or just the yolk? I have never made mayo with a whole egg before 
and would hate to put my kids off home made mayo!
This was very easy to cook. My 7 year old helped and did most of the prep himself, his favourite bit was shaping the fish cakes and getting all messy!
I did the cheats mayo as I was being lazy 
.
Have to say that this is the first recipe that we weren't at all fussed about. I definitely wont be making them again. My DS1 usually eats anything but only ate a little of this and didn't want the rest. VERY unlike him as he loves salmon. My DH ate all his but only so as not to waste them, he wasn't keen on them either. I think they found them a bit bland. I didn't eat them as salmon is evil. I can't eat pink food. [weirdo emoticon]
Like noyouhavehadawee I'm going to go back through the other recipes I didn't try previously as we've like all the others.
Not a potato councillor but will cook these tomorrow with my very willing DD 
and report back soon
My DD (9) already loves helping in the kitchen so this was a lovely opportunity to see if she can make this with as little help as possible. She chopped and mixed the ingredients very well and thoroughly enjoyed herself. Even better was the shaping of the patties and getting messy 
I did help with the cooking and sadly both DCs were not keen on the taste of the fishcake. They looked nice and very very appetising but we do not eat much fish so would not make them again according to the recipe.
However if I substitute cooked chicken for the fish next time I am certain they will enjoy them much more
Personally for myself and DH - I would add some chilli to spice them up a bit!
Fantastic recipe ..... thank you
Will try them this week. My 5 year old loves fishcakes so I'm sure he'd enjoy making these, I might even work out the WW points in them for you 
The MN recipe file could really do with a 'print recipe' option though....
Going to make them this afternoon with the DC.
I've worked out the fishcakes are about 10pp each which is quite a lot. The mayo is another 15pp per portion on top!! 
So that's 25pp just for this meal and I only get 26 per day!!
Admittedly, I'm on a diet but that's still quite calorie heavy for anyone.
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I made these today - having intended making them earlier in the week with ds1, first ds2 was ill and then ds1 was so it ended up later than anticipated and just me making them (DS1-6 was disappointed not to be up to making them today so have promised that we will try them again so he can do lots of helping). Have put some pictures of their making and the finished result on my profile...
Was a bit 
about the amount of potato in the fishcakes - turned out to be just one large-ish jacket potato size that my dh would have eaten 2 of for a meal by himself so was intrigued to see how it would stretch to 4 people.
There were a couple of things in the recipe that were a bit contradictory - for example it said it only took half an hour to do everything - but it then told you to refrigerate the mayo for at least 30 mins - and that's having put the potatoes on to boil and made the mayo too. Which makes the whole thing more than a 30 min recipe. And the printed version had 40g/ 3/4oz butter which is wrong (40g is closer to 1.4oz according to google). My printed version is downstairs and I'm too lazy to get it now I'm just checking against the online version which doesn't have the oz measurements in so I don't know if any of the others were wrong. Plus the mayo recipe said to use 'green onions' - I'm usually pretty good on veg but haven't ever come across green onions before. I just used a spring onion - which looking at the online recipe now I see they say to use the same thing - but it confused me a bit as spring onions had already been referred to as spring onions in the fishcake bit of the recipe which is what made me wonder if it was something different.
As it was for such a relatively small amount of potato that needed to be quite dry and I was going to use one large one anyway, rather than boil and mash it, I just microwaved it as a jacket potato and then pulled the skin off and mashed the insides which speeded things up a bit and also meant I didn't need to heat it again to drive off any excess moisture.
As some of the other reviews had said they could be excessively lemon-y I didn't worry about putting in every last scrap of lemon zest and juice - they ended up pleasantly lemony rather than overly so.
For the salmon I just used two fillets that were in a pack in the supermarket (300g) as this is all they had in. And tbh, the worst thing about the recipe was having to chop the fish - I don't really like fish at the best of times; I usually just manage to get it from the wrapping to the cooking dish without the need to touch it but this needed the skin taking off and lots of touching to chop it [euuww yukky smiley]. Bits ended up smaller than 1cm sq but worked well in the fishcake - not sure how well it would have all held together if they were much bigger. And how do you get the stinky fish smell off your hands properly?
I used a mix of butter and nice local rapeseed oil to fry them in rather than olive oil - we prefer the flavour.
They just fitted into my frying pan but I wasn't really sure about how thick they needed to be - which I am guessing is the thing that dictates how quickly they cook rather than diameter, so it would have been nice to have been told that (you've probably guessed by now that I am not a fish person and have never made fishcakes before - and they're certainly something I have never eaten through choice before so I'm not really that used to how they should look or be sized!). I would have been hacked off if I had had to fry them in two batches if they were a meal for a family - would have lengthened the time to table again.
Would have loved to have made mayo but was running late and tired (and dh is very health/fat aware so said up front he didn't want any due to the amount of oil in it) so used Hellmans - added lemon, basil and spring onions which made it nice. Think I could have added more of all of it and maybe a spoonful of yoghurt or cream if I'd had it to make it even nicer but it was fine.
I couldn't get hold of any watercress - so I did a simple tossed salad which worked really well plus was a bit more substantial than just watercress when having it as a main meal. I used a dressing that sounds really strange but actually works really well on the salad and in combination with the fishcakes to give it a bit of a different kick. Used a good teaspoon of barts coriander in a jar, a good squirt of thai sweet chilli sauce (1 dsp approx), a good squirt of balsamic vinegar (actually the merchant gourmet balsamic glaze which is thicker and sweeter than normal vinegar but very yummy) and mixed it all with rapeseed oil into french dressing consistency, then mixed in lettuce, cucumber and tomato with a sprinkle of salt (personally hate pepper and only use a very limited amount of salt - this is one of the few things I put it into).
Overall this was definitely my least favourite recipe - just because I hate fish so you were on to a non-starter from the beginning. I do try to eat salmon once every week or two to try to be healthy so at least you chose the one fish I do eat. I don't think there would have been enough here for four people - I couldn't persuade either ds to try the fishcakes (their being ill probably didn't help but they are not great fish lovers either). DH and I shared them between us - and he had a couple of small jacket potatoes too as he was hungry. If I was having salmon normally I'd have a fillet and a few new little new potatoes, he would have lots more potatoes than me so I don't think that we were being particularly excessive by sharing them between us!
DH was pleasantly surprised by them - he wasn't really looking forward to them (he also isn't a great fish lover) - but not enough so that he would want me to actively go out of my way to make them again unlike lots of the others. He also thought they would be better with more potato in (especially as this was a recipe from the manyfacesofpotatoes) - particularly if you want to stretch the salmon between 4 people!
Can I just say thank you so much for choosing me to be a Potato Councillor - I've had lots of fun making the recipes and discovering new things to do with potatoes over the last few months and DH (who is a real potato lover) has certainly enjoyed trying everything even if it has been a bit of an uphill struggle to persuade the dc. It's also been a good challenge personally to start to use a few recipes again (I've got stuck in a rut repeating favourites and when I do experiment it tends to be variants of familiar things, plus I tend to be a bit of a 'pinch of this, dash of that' cook rather than a strict recipe follower so it is nice to be reminded to try them. I've also enjoyed trying to take pictures of it as I've gone along (not strictly part of it I know!) and I have no idea if anyone will have looked at them but again it's added a different dimension and made me think more about doing the recipes and their presentation as well as the end taste.
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