Fish Burgers With Guacamole

With the success of the lovely teriyaki salmon skewers, I cracked on with the next recipe I'd marked up in my new diet cook book.

However, Lundulph had made an impulse purchase of smoked herring and suggested I use it, rather than the suggested fish in the recipe, which was either salmon, haddock or hoki. The result was really not to my taste and frankly why would such a small fish need so many bones? Lundulph obligingly ate all of the burgers, apart from the one bite I tried. I think using one of the suggested fish would work better. The recipe actually calls for raw fish, not pre-cooked in any way. In fact they recommend frozen fish, that's been allowed to partially thaw, for easier handling.

Ingredients

Guacamole
1 small red onion
2 tomatoes
1 large avocado
2 tsp lemon juice
a few drops Tabasco
salt and pepper

Burgers 200 g smoked herring
2 boiled potatoes
1 egg
2 tbsp fresh chopped dill
salt and pepper
1 - 2 tbsp butter for frying

Method

1. If the fish is frozen, take out to thaw.
2. Starting with the guacamole, peel and dice the red onion finely and place in a bowl.
3. Dice the tomato and add to the bowl. Peel the avocado, dice it and mash up with a fork, then add to the bowl.
4. Stir through and add lemon juice, Tabasco, salt and pepper to taste, then cover with cling film and set aside.
5. Chop the partially thawed fish finely and place on a piece of kitchen tissue to drain off.
6. Peel and grate the potatoes, then stir together with the fish in a large bowl.
7. Stir in the egg, dill, salt and pepper, then form into small flat patties.
8. Heat up the butter and fry the patties until golden brown.

Serve with granary or rye bread and perhaps sliced tomato and lettuce. I didn't have any suitable bread, so I served with quinoa, stir-fried mixed veggies and alfalfa sprouts.

As I said, this really wasn't to my taste and spending most of the evening removing tiny bones from the herring didn't contribute to enjoying this meal.

The guacamole was OK, unfortunately the original recipe stated way too much lemon juice and I ended up adding a second avocado to neutralise the flavour. I had the left-overs for breakfast the next day on a slice of toast, which was very yummy.