Pike Fish Cakes Baked with Vegetables – Step-by-Step Recipe
Pike fish cakes are the first thing worth learning to cook once you've bought a spinning rod. So says an old fisherman I know, a real pike hunter. I always called minced patties “cutlets” and never wondered why. We're used to thinking of a cutlet as something made from ground meat, chicken or fish, shaped into a patty or a ball, coated in breadcrumbs and cooked on a grill or in a frying pan.
Strictly speaking, the word “cutlet” comes from the French côtelette, from côte — rib, meaning a piece of meat on the rib bone. Those we call bone-in cutlets. Patties made from ground meat are closer to meatballs, though that hardly spoils anyone's appetite.
Everyone makes them their own way. A long time ago people started calling patties of minced meat cutlets. Today they are made from just about anything and cooked any way you like. Although, to be fair, what we're used to calling a cutlet looks more like a meatball.
Dishes made from minced fish are always delicious, however you cook them. Fish meatballs braised in tomato sauce and served with mashed potatoes, for example, can be the highlight of any dinner.
The most important thing about making pike fish cakes is catching the pike. A pike weighing 1–1.5 kg is just right for fish cakes. To make sure dinner actually happens, you can simply buy one. There are plenty of ways to make fish cakes. By the way, if you steam them and add fragrant spices to the mince, the dish turns out very tasty.
Ingredients
3 servings
- Pike (whole or part) 1 kg
- Onion 2
- Stale white loaf 1 piece
- Egg 1
- Beetroot 1
- Carrot 1
- Vegetable oil 3 tbsp
- Milk 2-3 tbsp
- Salt, black pepper, dried aromatic herbs to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- To make pike fish cakes, you don't need a pike of any particular size. Pike can be small, large or very large, so part of a fish, the tail for example, will do just fine. The tail actually has plenty of flesh, but because of all the bones it's quite hard to cook anything from it. For mince, though, the tail is perfect. For more pike meat, scale up all the ingredients proportionally.
- Scale and gut the pike, cut off the head and fins. Use a sharp knife to cut out all the fillet, then remove the skin — you won't need it. The head, fins and bones can go into a fish stock for risotto or a homemade fish soup. It's worth saying that pike gives a very good yield of flesh.
- Peel the onion and chop it finely. Heat 1 tbsp vegetable oil in a sauté pan and fry the onion until deep golden. Whatever you do, don't overcook the onion, or the dish will taste burnt.
- Pass the pike fillet twice through a meat grinder with a fine plate. Any small bones in the fillet won't go through the plate — they collect in front of it, so almost none end up in the pike mince. This remarkable habit of the meat grinder to catch whole fish bones is very handy.
- Mix the mince with the fried onion. Wait until the onion has cooled, though, or the hot oil will cook the fish. Add one egg to the mince, season with salt and pepper to taste, and add 1–2 pinches of dried aromatic herbs typical of Mediterranean or Italian cuisine.
- Mix the pike mince until smooth. Add 2–3 tbsp milk or cream and mix thoroughly again. Recipes usually suggest adding a soaked white loaf to the mince, but that way you'll hardly ever “guess” the right consistency. So after adding the milk, it's better to add stale white loaf or white bread grated on the finest grater in small portions. Store-bought breadcrumbs are best avoided because of their poor quality. A French baguette is ideal.
- Add the breadcrumbs in small portions, mixing the mince at the same time, until it almost stops sticking to your hands and is very soft. Refrigerate the mince for 30 mins.
- Bake the beetroot and carrot in the oven or microwave until tender. Once cool, peel the vegetables and cut them into large slices or rounds 5–6 mm thick.
- Shape the fish mince into patties, wetting your hands with water. The size is up to you, but elongated patties about the length of your index finger are easiest to cook.
- Place the patties on a damp plate. Roll them in the rest of the grated white bread. Heat 2 tbsp vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the fish cakes until golden brown. There's no need to cook them through.
- Grease a ceramic or glass baking dish with the remaining vegetable oil. Lay the fish cakes in it and put the dish into an oven preheated to 200 °C. After 20 mins, arrange the sliced carrot and beetroot around the fish cakes and drizzle the vegetables with a little vegetable oil or brush them with it.
- Return the dish with the fish cakes and vegetables to the oven for another 15 mins. That's usually quite enough, but if in doubt you can bake them longer. In that case, keep an eye on the fish cakes so they don't burn.
- When they're done, put the fish cakes on plates and use the vegetables as a side. Add fresh herbs and grated horseradish.
- Serve the pike fish cakes with baked vegetables piping hot. If you like, drizzle them with melted butter.
| Yield: | 3 servings |
| Calories: | 129 |
| Prep: | 1 h |
| Cooking: | 1 h |
| Ready in: | 2 h |
| Category: | Main Dishes |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
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4.3
(9)
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