A short series of fishy ideas 3: Smoked mackerel hash

I know a lot of people think it’s minging, but I’m a big fan of corned beef. In a sandwich with brown sauce on crusty white bread – heavenly.

So I also love a bit of corned beef hash. Which made me think about what else could be hashed.

There’s usually a pack of smoked mackerel in our freezer on standby for fishcake duties (and Hugh says we’re allowed) so I thought I’d try hashing it up.

Works a treat – I highly recommend this for simple, tasty and guaranteed-you’ve-never-had-it-before tea. And it’s cheap as chips. Cheaper, probably.

First up, parboil a pan of cubed spuds. Take them out and dry them off a bit.

In a big frying pan, fry up a sliced onion until translucent. Toss in the potatoes and fry for about 10 minutes until they start to crisp up and colour. Break up a couple of mackerel fillets into generous chunks, removing skin and bones and pop them into the pan – from now on, the less you move it all about the better as you won’t want things to break up too much.

Finally add some shredded spring cabbage – it’ll wilt in the heat of the pan and crisp up a bit round the edges too. Taste and season with salt and pepper. I wished I’d cooked a fried egg to go with it as that, I suspect, would top it all off perfectly.

All done – call it brunch and you could make a mint down your local gastropub.