Vegetarian Fish Cakes

So over the last few days I’ve been watching Eat Well For Less? where VMHQ’s favourite UK Masterchef judge Gregg Wallace and a mate go into people’s houses who are spending outrageous amounts of money on their weekly shop, and help them figure out how to cut it down.

There has been a lot of fish products spoken about and when fish cakes kept getting mentioned I found myself desperately craving the lemony mashed potato fried cake part of it all and wound up in the kitchen whipping these up for dinner. Behold: Vegetarian fish cakes!

Now I didn’t make them fishy tasting (although I’m not opposed to it) but you could if you wanted to with some seaweed flakes or kelp granules. I keep none of those in the house despite my survival prepper pantry (too lazy) so I gave them a miss.

In place of the fish chunks, I used half a can of cannellini beans, and just mashed them a little bit to retain slight texture. They have about zero flavour so if you/the fam aren’t into beans you can rest assured you won’t bite into these and cry. Both my fussy kids ate these and I did mental cartwheels from the excitement of it all.

They are also incredibly cheap to make – potatoes, beans, lemon, egg, salt, flour is the base of it, which you can customise according to what you have on hand. I love a bit of green onion and parsley.

Now you have four choices to coat these puppies in:

• dip into beaten egg and then into breadcrumbs (panko or regular, whatever floats your boat)
• roll in cornmeal/polenta (my choice as I was out of breadcrumbs)
• dust in a bit of flour
• leave plain

And you can either bake or fry these but I’m all about the fry. A bit of butter, a bit of oil to stop from sticking, and happy days.

I used a mixture of boiled potatoes and some leftover baked potato from when I made potato skins for the NRL grand final feast. I know plenty of people prefer the baked for various reasons, but I couldn’t really tell much of a difference, so prepare your mash however you want.

We served with homemade tartare (to 200ml mayonnaise add 2 chopped gherkins and 2 tablespoons of capers and a squeeze of lemon) and a salad. Which the children didn’t eat. Of course.

Vegetarian Fish Cakes

★★★★★ 5 from 1 reviews

• Author: Stacey Roberts | Veggie Mama
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 20 mins
• Total Time: 30 mins
• Yield: 8 patties 1x
• Category: Dinner
• Method: Frying
• Cuisine: Vegetarian

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Description

Got a craving for the lemony mashed potato fried cakes part of fish cakes? Me too. These vegetarian fish cakes should fill the gap.

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Scale 1x2x3x

Ingredients

• 200g cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
• 4 Large potatoes, boiled and mashed
• 2 Large eggs
• 1/2 Medium lemon, zested
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• 1 cup cornmeal polenta
• 1/2 cup finely diced celery (optional)
• 2 Small shallots, finely diced (or regular onion)
• 2 stalks green onions, sliced thinly
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (dried is fine, just use a little less)

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Instructions

1. In a large bowl, roughly mash the cannellini beans.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients (except cornmeal) and stir to combine.
3. Form into patties, roll in the cornflour, and chill in the fridge (overnight is best, but I made some after 30 minutes and they were great).
4. Heat a large pan over medium heat, and add some butter and olive oil. Fry patties gently for about 8 minutes each side until golden and crispy, and cooked through.
5. Serve with an extra wedge of lemon and your favourite sauce.

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