Smoked Haddock and butter beans in a creamy mustard sauce - Dish of the Month

I love smoked haddock and generally just use it for fish pie so I decided to search through my hundreds of cookbooks for a new recipe. I found a lovely one in Nigel Slaters Kitchen diaries - the recipe is smoked haddock with flageolet beans in a creamy mustard sauce but I love butterbeans so decided to use these instead.

 

It was very easy to make - I don't tend to measure things out which is why each time I make the dish it tastes different but I love that!
Here are the ingredients you need for 2 peeps...
 2 fillets of  smoked haddock
butter for greasing the dish
 milk ( enough to just about cover the fish)
a couple of bay leaves
2 x  tins of beans ( butter beans , flageolet or whatever you have)
a carton of  double cream ( I used reduced fat in the hope of making it not so rich!)
a handful of fresh parsley leaves, chopped
1 heaped Tbsp wholegrain mustard
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Remove the skin from the smoked haddock and place the fish in a lightly buttered baking dish. Pour over the milk, then add enough water almost to cover the fish. Tuck in a couple of bay leaves and grind over some black pepper. Bake at 200C for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Drain and discard the milk.Rinse and re-butter the baking dish, making sure you remove any bits of skin from the milk left behind. Rinse the beans in a sieve under running water, then empty them into a mixing bowl. Pour in the cream and a couple of tablespoons of milk, then chop the parsley and add it together with the mustard, a grinding of black pepper and a little salt..Spoon the beans into the dish and lay the fish on top, spooning some of the creamy beans over the top to keep it moist. Turn the oven down to 180C and bake for about forty minutes, until the cream is bubbling and the sauce has thickened around the beans . I added some spinach that I had wilted to it for a little colour

Then eat!! We had this with some crusty warm fresh bread. Its a lovely meal to have on a cold Autumnal evening.

I am going to enter this into a food blogging challenge that I have discovered and would like to take part in - its called Dish of the Month and is hosted by Farmers Girl Kitchen and A Little Bit Of Heaven On A Plate