Salmon Fishcakes with Remoulade and Raw Vegetable Salad

Start with the fish. Cod brings a clean, almost neutral taste and flakes apart easily — that's structure you're borrowing, since cod itself has decent natural muscle fibre holding it together even raw. Salmon brings fat and colour and a stronger flavour that would be too much on its own; together they balance each other the way a fatty cut and a lean cut balance each other in mince for burgers. If you can't get fresh salmon, frozen and defrosted works — pat it properly dry first, because that extra water is exactly the thing threatening your binding. Any firm white fish — haddock, pollock — stands in for the cod; what you're choosing on is "flakes but doesn't disintegrate when raw," not a particular species.

The onion and courgette go in raw and finely chopped in the processor for two reasons, not one. They add moisture and a vegetable sweetness once cooked, but raw they're mostly water-in-waiting — which is why they're processed fine rather than left in chunks, so that water distributes through the mix instead of pooling in one corner of the patty and turning it soggy on one side. Any firm vegetable with a mild taste could go here instead — celeriac, a bit of fennel — the criterion is low moisture release and no flavour strong enough to fight the fish.

The egg does structural work, not flavour work — it's the thing that actually sets when heat hits it and locks the chopped fish and vegetable into a solid piece; without it you have fish-flavoured rubble. The flour's job is absorption: it mops up whatever moisture the vegetables and cream contribute so the mix is firm enough to shape by hand, not wet enough to need a spoon. If you're short of flour, breadcrumbs do the same absorbing job, though they change the texture a touch — slightly more open, less dense.

Butter and oil together in the pan is an old trick worth keeping, not inventing new for: butter alone burns before the fishcake's crust has set, oil alone doesn't give you the browning or the smell. The oil raises the smoke point, the butter brings the flavour — fry in both and you get colour without burning. Any neutral oil with no smell of its own — sunflower, rapeseed, a light vegetable oil — would do the oil half; what you're avoiding is something with a strong taste of its own, like strong olive oil, elbowing out the fish.

The remoulade is mayonnaise with gherkin for sharpness and crunch and curry powder for warmth — crème fraîche loosens it and adds a sourness plain mayonnaise alone doesn't have. The salad's logic is acid against fat: lemon juice and honey dressed over raw grated carrot and apple cuts through the richness of fried fish bound in cream, the way a squeeze of lemon cuts through any fried fish dish. Raisins and sunflower seeds are there for texture more than taste — something to bite against in a salad that's otherwise soft, grated, and a little wet.

And the potatoes — wedges, oiled, roasted hot till the outside crisps and the inside goes soft, which you check by seeing the colour turn from pale to golden-brown at the edges, not by watching a clock. Some say wedges need parboiling first like proper roast potatoes — no, not here, because you're not after the fluffy centre of a Sunday roast potato, you're after something closer to a chip's crust, and a hot oven straight from raw does that job on its own, provided you turn them so every side gets its turn against the hot tray.

Patience is the one ingredient missing from the list but present in the method: the half hour's chill before frying is non-negotiable if you want a cake and not a mess, and nothing in a food processor replaces it.