‘I just bought a whole salmon for £10!’ exclaimed my other half on Sunday. I had one too many white wines on Saturday evening and I ate like a horse the morning after. A fry up followed by a burger, chips and chocolate pudding from The Walton’s hotel in Nottingham. As you can imagine, I wasn’t really in the mood for salmon.

I arrived home and my friends were sat in the garden enjoying the balmy summer evening, having just devoured half the salmon with balsamic onions, butter sauce and asparagus. I was duly served a small plate and I ate it with great intent. The sauce was inspired by last weeks episode of Valentine Warner’s what to eat now and was lip smackingly gorgeous.

The left over salmon was refrigerated and used to make salmon fishcakes the following evening. Have a look at the recipe below, if you can get a whole salmon for £10, it’s a cheap and delightful eat!

1/2 of a whole salmon
1 red onion (finely chopped)
1 garlic clove (crushed)
30g butter
250ml full fat milk
50g plain flour
1 sprig of thyme
2 tsp fresh tarragon leaf
2 tbsp double cream
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp dojon mustard
1 tsp tomato purée
1 litre sunflower oil

Batter
2 eggs
3 slices of bread, toasted and blended
3 tbsp ground almonds

Pea purée
1/2 onion
1/2 tbsp White wine vinegar
Salt
Pepper
1tbsp cream
100g peas

Method
1. Bake salmon in oven in foil for 10-15 minutes
2. Remove bones and skin and leave to cool
3. Add butter to a pan and sweat off onions for 4 minutes and crush in garlic. After 1 minute seive in the flour and cook for a further 2 minutes
5. Gradually add the milk, constantly stirring
6. Once all of the milk is added keep stirring until smooth and remove from the heat
7. Add tsp of mustard, tomato purée, cream, tarragon, thyme and lemon and leave to cool
8. Once cool add salmon and refridgerate for a minimum of 3 hours
9. To prepare the batter you will need 3 bowls. In the first bowl place3 heaped tbsps flour, in the second
with 2 beaten eggs and breadcrumbs and almonds in the third
10. Mould the fish mixture into burger shapes and roll in the flour, dip in egg and toss in breadcrumbs and alomond mix
11. Repeat with each fish cake
12. Heat oil to 180degrees maximum
13. Deep fry fish cakes for 2 minutes each
14. Fry off onion. Add 1 teaspoon of White wine vinegar and reduce for 2 minutes
15. Add frozen peas along with boiling water and boil
16. Warm through and blend
17. Add 1 tbsp off cream and blend until smooth
18. Serve with asparagus and a wedge of lemon

We thought that we had burnt the first batch but we didn’t, it was in fact lovely and crispy!