Surprisingly good salmon fishcakes

Forget the DJ - last night, tinned salmon saved my life.

As I was madly peeling potatoes on Monday evening on our return from camping, I decided to do extra mash, with a vague idea that I would do something interesting later in the week. After a totally uninspired freezer dive on Tuesday, yesterday I had recovered a little more of my imagination and decided to make fishcakes.

Do you have a good recipe for fishcakes? I have to say that everytime I read a recipe for them, I think - "That looks odd". So I end up making it up as I go along. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. The tuna and sardine version did not go down too well. You live and learn.

Last night, I was very pleased with the results. I can't give exact quantities for the potato content, but I peeled, boiled and mashed 9 decent sized spuds and we were fairly hungry on Monday night when we had it with sausages. I added fish by eye to the left over mash, and used 300g of tinned salmon, plus 6 finely chopped spring onions, a beaten egg, the grated zest of 2 limes and plenty of salt and pepper.

This formed into 11 good sized fishcakes. I ummed and ahhed about whether to coat them with anything, and decided on balance that I would, so I got out 3 plates - flour on one, beaten egg in the second, oatmeal on the third (but it could have been breadcrumbs, or polenta), then rolled the fishcakes - flour, egg, then oatmeal, and put 8 on a foil lined baking sheet. The remaining 3 have gone in the freezer ready to save my life on another occasion.

I drizzled a little olive oil over the fishcakes and baked them at around 200 degrees (fan) for 25 minutes, turning them over once.

I served them with peas and a red cabbage salad which used up most of the lime juice from those I had zested. Delicious - if I do say so myself.