This weekend’s top kitchen concoction (just finished off in today’s packed lunch) is baked salmon fishcakes. We recently bought a whole salmon which I divided into portions and, for the weekend, I got one of the bags out of the freezer. It had two steaks in it but they were so generous that one, grilled so the skin went crispy, was enough for us on Saturday and we had the other left over for Sunday. We also had some extra baked potatoes so decided to make some fishcakes.

The skin was taken off the salmon and put under the grill with the potato skins. That was simply as an hors d’oeuvre: waste not, want not. The salmon flesh was checked over for any remaining bones and then mashed together with the potato flesh, fresh ground black pepper and an egg. This mixture was divided into balls, coated with another egg (beaten) and rolled in breadcrumbs (thinly sliced and cross cut from a newish loaf, so relatively large and soft).

Some of the fishcakes went into a hot pan but the rest were put in a preheated tray of oil in a hot oven (along with some potato wedges in a separate tin, which were already roasting away). The pan-fried ones were decent but the oven-baked ones were a delight. Contrary to my expectations, they didn’t even need turning. The result was a brilliant blend of taste and texture; relatively simple but I think it would serve for a sophisticated dinner too.