Oily Fish & Caramel

Alex said, "you make nice food Mummy". Emma said, "Moh, moh" (trans. 'More, more'. Ah, the joy of pleasing your children with your culinary skills. Oh, the satisfaction of them eating well. 


There were two dish made by my fair hand for tea tonight. The first, in answer to the eternal and unanswerable question of 'how do you get your child to eat more oily fish?'; the second in answer to 'what's for pudding?'.


Emma was drawn in by the fish blimp blowing in the wind on The Gloucester Road this morning. 'That, that, that,' she cried with the obvious subtext of 'why don't you feed me enough oily fish mummy?'; perhaps if I did, she'd express it better. 


We bought two sardines. 60p each they were. I was thinking that there's something educational about eating a whole fish, knowing where your food comes from and all that, and a sardine is, size-wise at least, like me eating a whole trout. A whole oily fish each; oily brain goodness and face-on-the-plate educationalness. High levels of mummy virtuousness.


The bloody things weren't gutted or scaled. And that's how often I buy whole fish. Of course they weren't. So I gutted and scaled them. I followed Leith's instructions to use salt to rub the black stuff off the cavities - yummy. Slashed them, grilled them, remembered how sardines (sans tin) are pure bone. Whole fish education was then abandoned and I managed to extract about a tablespoon of mush with an acceptable fish-to-bone ratio.


Fish-mush added to boiled potatoes, parsley, lemon juice, black pepper, creme fraiche and peas. It was very hard to see any fish. So I added half a pack of smoked mackerel fillets. The ones that come in vacuum packs, without scales, guts, black stuff or bones. And they're oily fish. And I'd forgotten I'd got a pack in the fridge. 


Still, a pretty nice tea dish came together and was eaten with reasonable willing. 


What's for pudding? All the effort with the sardines meant they ate up the slightly stale Tesco choccy mini muffins with a blob of Carnation Caramel. In case you don't know. It's condensed milk, pre-boiled. It's the 'offee' bit of Banoffee Pie. It's a bit wrong. Alex then said, "you make nice food Mummy". Emma said, "Moh, moh, moh, moh..."