'Yardie' pumpkin fish pie

“Pumpkin Everythang”

I love casserole dishes, where the meat and carb is baked into one lovely slab of flavor. I had a lot of fun tweaking the traditional fish pie recipe to fit with the pumpkin month theme. And not only that Instead of making the fish pie filling the traditional way, I revamped it to incorporate all the lovely Jamaican flavors of allspice, coconut,  thyme, scallions and scotch bonnet peppers. Its fish pie “yardie” style.

Fish pie is the seafood lover’s version of a shepherd’s pie. A layering of creamy seafood and vegetables and sometimes cheese, topped with mashed potatoes and baked. A British dish I have wanted to make since 2009. I know the ingredient list looks quite long, but it’s really not that bad. The dish over all is not very time consuming in terms of cooking times. It’s truly the prepping of ingredients that take up the most time.

The pumpkin element by far really complements the dish well. I can assure you that even the traditional method fish pie recipe would do well with this mix of pumpkin and sweet potato topping. As you may (or may not) know pumpkin when cooked gets extremely soft. So I had to mix the pumpkin with a starchier vegetable so it would hold up to the task at hand. Since sweet potatoes are sweet, and pumpkins are also naturally sweet they worked well together. The overall flavor is predominantly pumpkin but the starch from the potatoes help to bind and firm up the topping.

 Ingredients (printable recipe)

Sweet potato pumpkin mash
2 cup Pumpkin

2 cup Sweet potato

4 tablespoon Butter

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon Onion powder

Fish stew 
2 tablespoon oil

2 tablespoon butter

¼ cup Celery

½ cup Onion

¼ cup Carrot

3 tablespoon flour

1 cup Coconut milk

1 cup Heavy cream

1 teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon Ground allspice

½ cup Tomato

1 teaspoon Thyme

2 Scallion stalks

½ Scotch bonnet pepper

2 pound fish filet (chopped and seasoned with 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon black pepper)

1 cup sweet peas

1 cup corn

1 cup chopped spinach (or any green you choose)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 475 degrees

Mashed sweet potato and pumpkin

• Steam the pumpkins and sweet potatoes until soft
• In a food processor blend potatoes, pumpkin, butter salt and onion powder until smooth.

Creamy fish stew

• Chop fish filet into cubes and season with salt and pepper
• Grate garlic, Chop onions, tomatoes, celery, carrot scallions and hot pepper
• Heat butter and oil in a pot to sauté the celery onions and carrots
• When the onions begin to soften, add the flour and stir to cook the flour to create a roux
• Add the coconut milk and heavy cream; stir until the roux is dissolved
• Add sugar, salt, ground allspice, tomatoes, thyme, scallion and hot peppers.
• Cook mixture until it begins to thicken
• Add the fish, sweet peas, corn and spinach to the creamy mixture
• Allow the fish to begin to cook and the sauce to thicken and reduce
• Place the pumpkin sweet potato mash in a piping bag or a plastic bag with the tip cut off
• Transfer fish mixture to a casserole dish then pipe the mash all over the top
• Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until the top of the casserole has started to brown
• When you remove it from the oven allow it to rest and come together for at least 10 to 15 minutes before serving (don’t worry it will still be piping hot)

Greedy tips:

• For cooking the pumpkin; you don’t want a method of cooking which boils the pumpkin (because they will be too wet), you could bake them or you could steam cook them. I steamed both the pumpkin and the sweet potatoes in a pressure cooker for 15 minutes. If you don't like pressure cookers boil the sweet potatoes and bake the pumpkin.
• You can cook the pumpkin with the skin on and then scoop out the filling since pumpkins are so hard to peel. The sweet potatoes can be done the same way however those are easier to peel so they can be peeled before cooking if you like.
• Make sure to place a tray under the casserole as it is likely to bubble over when cooking in the oven

Xoxo Greedygirl