After a fish dinner, there is often a modest amount left over, too little to serve as a meal on its own but too good to throw away. This small portion can easily be flaked apart and mixed with mashed potato, a beaten egg and a little chopped herb to form the base of simple fish cakes that taste far better than their humble origins suggest.
The mixture is shaped into small rounds and lightly coated before being fried until golden on each side. Because the fish is already cooked, the cakes only need enough time in the pan to heat through and crisp up on the outside, which makes this a quick way to turn last night's dinner into tonight's meal without much extra effort.
A new shape for an old meal
Fish cakes made this way never taste quite the same twice, since the flavour depends entirely on what sort of fish and seasoning were used the first time round. Some batches turn out delicately flavoured, others more robust, depending on the herbs or spices that happened to be in the cupboard that particular week.
This approach also works well for small households, where a single fillet of fish rarely stretches to a second full meal on its own. Turning it into fish cakes instead means the leftover portion becomes something worth looking forward to, rather than a slightly awkward amount that gets pushed to the back of the fridge.
Once this habit becomes familiar, leftover fish stops feeling like a problem to solve and starts feeling like the beginning of another meal. Fewer small portions get forgotten, and the fridge empties more steadily through the week instead of slowly filling up with odds and ends nobody quite knows what to do with.
