Aishling Moore: My simple recipe for loaded potato skins is a perfect supper

Aishling Moore shares her simple supper of loaded potato skins

Aishling Moore's salt fish baked potato and cabbage slaw. Picture: Chani Anderson

Spuds and salad is my idea of the perfect simple supper. This weekend’s recipe is a baked potato skin stuffed with salt fish brandade and served with a zippy sweetheart cabbage and chilli slaw.

Brandade can be made in a variety of ways. It can be cooked from start to finish in the one pot.

First, soften the onions and garlic in oil before adding diced potatoes and salt fish to the mix, topping with water and simmering until the potatoes are breaking apart.

Most recently, I have found a new approach to brandade, cooking the potatoes separately to the onions, garlic, and salt fish. Not introducing water to the mix results in a dish with more flavour Baking the potatoes benefits the final outcome massively with the flavour of the skins transferring to the interior as it cooks.

Salt fish is a wonderful ingredient for dishes like these, where a little goes a long way. It performs a dual role in this recipe both flavouring and seasoning the mixture, so do taste before you instinctively add salt to the cooked potatoes.

If you can’t get your hands on salt fish and don’t want to go to the trouble of salting for days then just sprinkle a piece of white fish with an excessive amount of salt and let it sit for at least an hour — this will allow water to be extracted from the fish. Use as directed in the recipe, first rinsing off the excess salt.

Don’t leave out the fish sauce in the shredded cabbage slaw. It adds the necessary salt to this simple salad while also lending an umami punch.

Salt Fish Baked Potatoes with Cabbage & Chilli Slaw

recipe by:Aishling Moore

Instead of salt fish you could flake some cooked cold smoked haddock, hot smoked mackerel, or some tinned fish through the potatoes before baking.

Servings

4

Cooking Time

 1 hours 10 mins

Total Time

 1 hours 10 mins

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• For the salt fish baked potatoes

• 100g salt fish

• 780g potatoes (washed and scrubbed)

• 100ml golden rapeseed oil

• 1 onion, diced

• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• 2 scallions, finely sliced

• For the cabbage and chilli slaw

• 1 small sweetheart cabbage shredded

• 1 red chilli, finely sliced

• 4 scallions, finely sliced

• 1 tbsp rapeseed oil

• Juice 1 lime,

• ¼ tsp fish sauce

• 2 sprigs mint leaves, picked

Method

1. 24 hours before you intend on making this dish, rinse the salt fish to remove any excess salt that’s on the exterior. Soak in 600ml cold water over night. Changing the water once. This allows the fish to rehydrate and removes salt.

2. Preheat oven to 180°C.

3. Place the potatoes on a shallow baking sheet and cook for 45- 50 minutes until cooked and a paring knife glides through without any resistance.

4. While the potatoes are cooking place the rapeseed oil in a small heavy based pot on medium heat.

5. Add the onion and garlic, cook until beginning to turn golden brown. Approximately 5 minutes.

6. Reduce the heat to low and add the salted fish. Cook for approximately 6 minutes until the fish is cooked through and flakes when pressed with the back of a spoon. Remove from the pot and flake the salted fish. Once the potatoes are cooked, allow to cool slightly before slicing in half and scooping out the floury interior from the skin and place in a large mixing bowl. Reserve the skins.

7. Mash the potatoes, then add the fish, onion, garlic, rapeseed oil and scallions and fold through. Taste to adjust seasoning.

8. Place a heaped tablespoon in each potato skin and baked on a baking sheet in a preheated oven at 190°C for 10 minutes until golden brown.

9. While they finish baking, make the slaw.

10. Place the shredded cabbage, chilli, scallions and torn mint leaves in a medium sized mixing bowl. Add the fish sauce, lime juice and oil and toss to coat.

11. Taste to correct seasoning and serve with the baked potatoes.

Fish tales

Soaking the salt fish overnight is imperative to the success of this dish or any dish that requires salt fish. Soaking the fish removes the excess saturation of salt.

Choose potatoes of a similar size so that they cook at the same rate.

To make your own salt fish, place a finger nail -deep layer of salt on the base of a non-reactive dish followed by fresh fish and coat in another layer of salt to completely cover. After a day or two, most of the water will be removed from the fish. Remove from the water saturated salt and repeat the process of layering with salt in a clean dry container.

The sweetheart cabbage can be swapped for red cabbage or Chinese cabbage.