Kitchen Fun With Frankie: Take A Tin of Mackerel

Thu 10 Sep 26

I’m Not a Fish Man. Then Frankie Turned Up With a Tin of Mackerel.

Phil

PHIL ROBERTS
THE MORNING SHOW

Let me set the scene

I’m the bloke who once sat in a restaurant in Cardiff, was offered kangaroo, and quietly died inside. I’m the bloke who looks at an open tin of fish and thinks, no thank you. So when Frankie Dunn — MasterChef semi-finalist, Lymm resident, and now a properly busy Cheshire chef — announced that this month’s ingredient was oily fish, I braced myself.

Reader, she got me. Again.

Tinned fish is having a moment (and I’m late to it)

Frankie’s doing something new on the show: every month she brings in one ingredient and shows us what to do with it. This month it was mackerel, straight out of a tin.

Now, tinned fish carries baggage, doesn’t it?

It’s got that wartime, back-of-the-cupboard, your-grandparents’-tea sort of connotation. Frankie reckons a lot of that is down to quality — the cheap stuff comes out in one sad, bitty lump, which is fine if you’re blitzing it, less fine if you want it to look like anything. Spend a bit more and the fillets stay whole.

The Spanish have a whole culture built around this: conservas, tins of everything from sardines to stuffed squid, sat proudly on supermarket shelves rather than hidden at the back.

She’s right that it’s having a moment, too. There’s a whole world of small producers online reviving it — Fishwife being one of the names she mentioned. Babs, if you’re reading, this one’s for you. I know you’ll have already looked it up.

The bit where I thought about my dad

Frankie’s tip for a lazy tea: Cornish sardines in a tomato and chilli sauce, tipped straight out of the tin onto toast, squeeze of lemon, done.

And I’ll be honest, that stopped me for a second.

My dad worked in a steelworks — shift work, long days — and my mum used to do him sardines on toast as a treat. A bit of butter. Tomato sauce on the side. Dennis and Glenys, they were called. Ridiculous names, bless them. He absolutely loved it, and in fairness to him, that was his health kick.

Turns out he was onto something. Oily fish like mackerel and sardines are some of the best sources of omega-3 going and the NHS suggests two portions of fish a week, one of which is oily. Cheap as anything, too.

Frankie Dunn

Frankie's mackerel and butter bean pâté

This is a ten-minute job. You can serve it as a starter in a ramekin to look very sophisticated, or as a dip on a picky-bits board, which is how Frankie has it at home.

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Prep Time 10

Course: Salad

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

1 tin Mackerel
1 tin Butter Beans
2 tbsp Greek Yoghurt
1/2 Juice & Zest of a Lemon
Salt & Pepper

Method

Drain the beans. Put all ingredients in a blender for a smooth pâté, or a food processor if you'd rather it coarse. You can even mash it by hand. Taste, season, done!

The butter beans aren't just filler — they add fibre and they thicken it, so if yours comes out like soup, a tin of beans brings it back together.

If you want a stronger flavour, use smoked mackerel instead of plain.

Notes

Serve it with toasted seeded sourdough and something sharp alongside to cut through, because it's rich stuff. Frankie brought cooked beetroot in a sweet chilli and vinegar glaze, which was gorgeous. Capers would do the same job.

Where to catch Frankie next

She’s everywhere at the minute. She’s at Ludlow Food Festival this weekend, then heading to York Food Festival for a head-to-head takoyaki cook-off against Tony, a fellow MasterChef semi-finalist — that’s the Japanese street-food snack, little batter balls with octopus inside, cooked in a dimpled pan. Audience tastes both, audience votes. Brave.

Closer to home:

Friday 18 September — April’s Kitchen, Knutsford. Seven-course Spanish tasting menu with wine pairings. Caramelised onion tortilla with black garlic aioli, mussel escabeche, and a burnt dark chocolate Basque cheesecake with candied chilli to finish. Vegetarian option now available. Only a couple of tables left when we spoke.
Thursday 8 October — Truffle, Lymm. Five courses touring European summer. Sold out, sorry.
Wednesday 11 November — Morgan Edwards, Knutsford. Five courses with wine pairings.
Booking is through feastingwithfrankie.co.uk or her Instagram.

And the big news

Frankie’s taking a career break from the civil service, so from the end of this month she’s a full-time foodie. She’s also joined Scott and Emily at Lymmitless to keep herself honest, which I respect enormously.

But the thing that stayed with me was what she said about pressure. A magazine once asked whether she’d recommend everyone spend their annual leave doing something “productive.” She said no. Your leave is yours. You don’t have to be achieving something every waking minute.

Do it because you love it, or don’t do it at all. That’ll do for me.

Frankie’s back next month — and she’s promised something more complicated. Possibly less fishy. We’ll see.

Written by: Phil Roberts