As we reach the end of Scottish Food Fortnight it would be remiss of me to let the  occasion pass without mentioning the king of Scottish fish, the salmon. It  has to be one of my favourite fishes and I love to cook it in a variety of different ways.

However,  my boys prefer fish battered with chips and it was a challenge to get them to eat Salmon. Fish cakes seemed the answer and to start with I kept them simple, just adding parsley, potatoes and seasoning. Having discovered that they actually liked them and with their love of spicy food I changed the ingredients, adding ginger, chilli and coriander and was secretly pleased with myself for getting them to eat at least one oily fish.

What type of Salmon? Wild or farmed it ‘s entirely your preference. I use both depending on what’s available,  I do prefer wild, my father enjoyed fishing so  I was brought up with a fishing rod in my hand, and salmon and trout were regularly part of our diet. However, nowadays there’s lots of good Scottish farmed salmon around and if using farmed I try to get organic but mostly it depends on where I buy and what’s available on the day. Very often if I’ve acquired a whole fish I freeze the leftover cooked fish and use that for fish cakes along with leftover mashed potatoes.

Ingredients

1lb Cooked salmon

1/2 lb potatoes, mashed without butter.

1Tbsp ginger, finely chopped

1 large Red chilli, finely chopped

3 spring onions finely,chopped

2 tbsp finely chopped coriander

2 tbsp tomato ketchup

Rapeseed oil.

Heat the oil in a pan, add the chilli and ginger and cook for 1 minute. Add the spring onion and continue cooking for another minute. Allow to cool slightly.

Place the salmon, potatoes, coriander and ketchup in a large bowl, then add the chilli, ginger and spring onion mixture, season and Mix well with your hands and then form the mixture in small rounds. This quantity will make approximately 12 fishcakes and will serve 4-5 people.

Chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook over a medium heat for around 4 minutes on each side until golden.

I usually serve these with sweet chilli sauce .