Collected Fudz

This is a bit of a rule-of-thumb sort of recipe that I learned from Rita, the lady I stayed with in East Wittering, during my not-quite-year in England, 1986-87; precise measures are utterly lacking.-

You must have all of these:

• fish fillet, fresh or frozen; I had salmon and tuna, but any white fish will do just as well as that colourful stuff
• mixed vegetables; I was lazy and took a package of frozen 'Buttergemüse' that you get anywhere in Germany; in Finland I would have used herne-maissi-paprika, and so on. If you're very conscientious, you prepare fresh vegetables, and in that case, I would use mushrooms, leeks and carrots, as Rita used to.
• white sauce; you can make it from scratch (Rita used to), heating butter, adding flower, making a 'butterball', then dissolving that with milk: - but I used the stuff from a packeage, just using milk instead of water. A bit of white pepper and a tiny tiny bit of nutmeg is good in either case.
• mashed potatoes; cooking the potatoes with ground artichokes for the sake of taste, and mashing them up along with the potatoes is something Rita used to do as well. I happened to have that sort of mashed potatoes from our Thanksgiving dinner, which had reminded me of Rita and her excellent cooking, and so I thought of the fish pie, actually

What you do with them:

• fish goes on the bottom of a oven-proof casserole type dish, with a bit of salt and white pepper if you want to; then the vegetables follow, then all that gets smothered in the white sauce.
• cover the whole with a solid layer of the mashed potatoes; best smooth it down witha  spatula to make sure the stuff underneath is completely covered.
• you can then rough up the top a bit, or sprinkle a bit of grated cheese, butter, or breadcrumbs for the sake of crustiness
• the whole thing goes into the oven at not too hot (180° C) for an hour -- which is the rule for any casseroles and gratins anyway, it seems, no matter of what, and how much there is of it. Seems to be a basic axiom of life, just like the thing with the drunks and nutcases always knowing when to get off the train or bus.

Enjoy!