Many of the ingredients for this pie are items that normally live in your pantry, so you can just browse through the shelves and the pie is half made!

It is deliciously light, brilliantly full of flavour and just so much a great cooler weather meal. Use whatever seafood you like or have to hand. Scallops, fresh and smoked fish, crab meat, lobster tails, prawns, indeed any seafood that you have in your freezer will work in this seafood pie.

Ingredients

1 onion, cut into quarters

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

500mL milk

300mL thickened cream

500g fish fillets

250g smoked fish

250g green prawns, peeled and deveined

3 eggs, hard boiled

50g butter

50g flour

4 shallots, roughly chopped

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

freshly ground salt and pepper

Potato topping ingredients

1kg potatoes, peeled and cut into small chunks

100mL milk

50g butter

1 egg yolk

Preparation

• Place the onion, black peppercorns, milk, cream and the fillets of smoked and unsmoked fish into a large pan and bring to a simmer. Continue to simmer until the fish is just cooked (this will take about 10 minutes depending on the thickness of the fillets). Lift the fish out of the pan and place to one side.

• Strain the cooking fluid into a bowl, and discard the onion and peppercorns. Break the fish into large chunks, removing any bones and skin. Place the fish chunks evenly over the base of a shallow, oven-proof dish. Top the fish chunks with the green prawns.

• Peel the hardboiled eggs and cut them into slices, and then pop the egg slices on top of the fish pieces in the ovenproof dish.

• Put the potatoes chunks into a pan of water and cook until tender.

• Melt 50g of butter in a saucepan, add the flour and cook, stirring for one minute. Remove the pan from the meat and gradually stir in the reserved cooking fluid. Bring it slowly to a simmer, stirring all the time to avoid lumps. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Once more, remove the pan from the heat and add the parsley and shallots. Stir gently.

• Pour the sauce over the top of the seafood in the ovenproof dish and allow to cool while you mash the potato topping.

• To make the topping, drain the potatoes well and mash until smooth. Add the butter and egg yolk to the potatoes and mix thoroughly. Add the milk a bit at a time, stirring, until the mashed potatoes are of a spreadable consistency.

• Preheat your oven to 200C/400F. Spread the potato over the top of the seafood and mark with a fork to produce a roughened surface. Bake for about 30 minutes until golden. Enjoy!