This is a winner. Seriously. 

Panko breadcrumbs are commonly used in Japanese cooking (you may have had crispy prawns with panko as their coating), but I thought I’d experiment with using them on fish. You can buy them in most Oriental supermarkets. I used some hake I had in the freezer (you can buy bags of it from Tesco) and it worked like a dream for this dish! It’s a relatively dense fish, which meant it could hold the breadcrumbs, and its especially fishy taste is simply delicious. I made the tomato ketchup from my leftover pasta sauce, with the addition of  a dash of white wine vinegar and a sprinkle of sugar, all blended into a smooth sauce. I’m really pleased with this dish so I hope you like it as much as I do. If you give it a go, take a picture for Instagram and use the hashtag #flavoursoffrankie to show me how it turned out!

Serves 2.

Equipment needed:

• Blender

Ingredients

For the fish:

• 2 fillets of hake (or any other white fish, skinless)
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 50g panko breadcrumbs

For the ketchup:

• Leftover tomato pasta sauce – if you want to make this from scratch, I used onion, garlic, a bit of red bell pepper, a splash of balsamic vinegar, 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• Pinch of salt and pepper

These measurements are all estimates because it depends how much pasta sauce you started with. Taste taste taste! 

For the chips:

• 2 potatoes
• 1 sweet potato

For the pea puree:

• 1 cup frozen peas, defrosted

Method

Start with the chips. Set the oven to 160ºC (fan) and chop the potatoes into whatever size wedges you want. Bear in mind that the thinner you cook them, the quicker they’ll cook. Lay them out on a couple of baking trays and drizzle with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Make sure all the wedges are coated in the oil. Whack them in the oven and get on with the rest of the meal!

To make the ketchup, put all the ingredients into the blender and whizz until smooth. Taste it as you go to make sure you get the flavours just right. For the pea puree, do the same again: add all the ingredients to a blender and whizz until smooth, checking for seasoning.

For the fish, crack the egg into a shallow dish and whisk with a fork. In another dish, add the flour. Coat the fish in a light layer of flour then transfer to the egg and do the same there. In another dish, pour in the panko breadcrumbs and roll the floury, eggy fish fillets in them, making sure as many breadcrumbs as possible stick to the fish.

Add about 2 tbsp vegetable oil or olive oil into a frying pan and turn on to medium heat. Carefully place the fish in the pan – watch out for any splatters from the oil! Each side should take about 2-3 minutes on a medium heat but it depends again on the thickness of the fillet. The breadcrumbs should be golden brown.

Remove the chips from the oven and plate up!