No-Fish Fishcakes with Garlic Hasselbacks

One by one, put each small potato in a wooden spoon (to hold it in place) and cut through it at roughly 3mm intervals, to make the potato fan out at the top but still be held together underneath.

Thinly slice the garlic cloves and put a sliver of garlic in between each potato disc. One clove should be enough to stuff two potatoes.

Put the potatoes on an oven-safe tray, drench in oil, and heavily sprinkle with salt. Put them in the oven at 200 degrees C (390 F) for forty minutes. (They will need extra cooking time, but we’ll come to that later.)

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes and put them in salted boiling water over a high heat on the stovetop.

Fry the bacon on the stovetop over medium heat until it has reached the texture you like.

Process the bread into breadcrumbs – I used the blender. Then put it a mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Carefully remove the bacon from the heat, allowing the fat to drip back into the pan, and either chop it finely or blend it into oblivion. Keep the bacon fat in the pan – you’ll use it later. Mix the crushed bacon with the breadcrumbs.

The forty minutes cooking time for the potatoes should be up around now. Turn the oven down to 150 degrees C (300 Fahrenheit) and cook them for a further thirty minutes, topping each potato with a pat of butter if you feel like it.

Back to the cakes:
Drain the sweet potatos and mash thoroughly, with a splash of milk if necessary.

Tip the sweet potato into the bacon-breadcrumb mixture, and add mayonnaise, lime and more seasoning before shaping into cakes. I made nine, each of them a little smaller than the palm of my hand.

Wrap the cakes in clingfilm and refrigerate for twenty minutes.

When ready to cook, flour the cakes very lightly on each side and cook over medium heat in the bacon fat from earlier, adding oil if necessary.

The cakes should only need two to three minutes frying time, turning once. Make sure they are heated all the way through – as long as you don’t actually burn them, it’s probably better to over-cook than under-cook.

Serve with the garlic Hasselbacks.