Smoked Fish and Parsnip Cakes | Make Ahead

How do you make a cake without the usual sugar and wheat flour, in other words, a more nutritious kind for everyday eating? The answer is to make savory cakes like these smoked fish and parsnip cakes. Yotam Ottolenghi has quite a few fish and savory cake recipes. I found this one in Simple. (No sugar and no flour or breadcrumbs.) He streamlines an earlier recipe, cut out some ingredients, so that there are less than ten. With that and the ease of making ahead, these fish cakes nicely fit into the “simple” mode of operation.

Why parsnips, you may ask? Although the intention is not to make a sweet cake, the sweetness of the parsnip comes through, front and center. You may mistakenly think sugar is one of the ingredients. It is not. However, salt is. Ottolenghi introduces me to the many uses of parsnip, now it has become one of my pantry staples. Parsnip cakes, I just can’t pass them up.

I made these for dinner, with a cabbage slaw. Ottolenghi recommends serving them for brunch with a poached egg and horseradish cream. Yum, that sounds like a delicious weekend brunch that’d compete with the lox and bagel routine that my daughter never seems to get tired of. Lox and fresh bagels may not be readily available outside of New York city. The smoked fish and parsnip cakes on sourdough bread with an egg on top seems like an appealing alternative. Wouldn’t you agree? Once you make the fillings, you can have these cakes at anytime of the day.

To make it even more simple, I put the fish cake fillings in a preheated cast-iron mini cake pan and bake them in the oven. I have to say I can’t tell the difference between frying and baking. The advantages are less time and less oil.  You don’t have to stand by the stove and fry each cake, one by one. Going a step further, these smoked fish and parsnip cakes can be squeezed into smaller balls with a cookie scoop. Bake them on a sheet pan. Serve them on a stick with the horseradish cream. Viola, a fitting holiday appetizer!

Mise en place

Roast parsnips in 400°F oven for 30 minutes.

Served with a wedge of lemon or horseradish cream

Print Recipe

Smoked Fish and Parsnip Cakes

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 6 parsnips (6 cups/600g), peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks
• 1/2 cup/120 ml olive oil
• salt
• 1-2 tbsp water, as needed
• 1 lb 3 3/4 oz/560g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 1 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 cup/20g dill, roughly chopped
• 1 cup/20g chives, roughly chopped (I used parsley)
• 2 garlic clove, crushed
• 2 lemons, finely zest to get 2 tsp, then cut into wedges to serve
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• black pepper
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter
• FOR THE HORSERADISH CREAM:
• 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce)
• 150g sour cream
• 2 tsp lemon juice

Instructions

1

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

2

Toss the parsnip with 3 tbsp of the oil and 1/4 tsp of salt. Transfer to a large parchment-lined baking pan and roast for 30-35 minutes, until golden brown and soft. Tip into a food processor and blitz to form a coarse mash. If the mix is very dry, then add the water and blitz again to combine. Transfer to a large bowl and set aside.

3

Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add the parsnip, along with the dill, chives, garlic, lemon zest eggs, 1-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper. Mix well and form into 12 patties: they should be about 3 1/4-inch wide and 1 1/4-inch thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.

4

Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place over a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with wedges of lemon.

Notes

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Simple