Mmm Fishcakes...

Proud chef blogs his own Thai fishcake recipe

For the up-and-coming family christmas which we celebrate early, I volunteered to make some food and spent the afternoon today doing a rather rich chocolate cheescake and then some Thai fishcakes to take away with us. I absolutely love Thai fish cakes - I'm always lamenting that they don't do them as a main-course at restaurants and have always meant to get around to having a stab at making some myself. So with that in mind I had a wee trawl of teh intarwebs and didn't really find any recipes that I thought looked right or had very hard-to-find ingredients I wouldn 't easily find in a Crüshánde Supermarche.

So with all the bravado of a cocky get I thought 'sod it I'll make it up' and post to cooking and eating a few am really more proud with the result than is normal—so here I am sharing my travails with my ever-interested blog audience.
(Who *are* you guys?)

So - here's teh recipe. It worked out pretty well. You need to be ok with handling fish to make the patties in your hand otherwise you'll get into a real mess trying out icecream scoops or other such nonsense.

Tags:Thai Fishcake recipe

Ingredients:

750g White Fish; (I used haddock but there are cheaper options - Rock, Hake, doesn't really matter)
Thumb-sized piece of root ginger, grated with the fine side of the grater
5 cloves of garlic, pushed through a press
3 teaspoons of lazy red chilli (or chop two or three fresh ones - seeds optional)
Handful of coriander, chopped finely
Handful of chives, chopped into little rings
Zest of two limes
3 tablespoons of thai fish sauce (Nam Pla - from most world food aisles)
1 egg white
Pinch of Salt and Pepper
Generous squib of Tomato pureé for colour

To serve:
Sweet chilli dipping sauce; Lime wedges; satay or anything else you like

Makes about 35 little bitesized cakes (see pic - sorry - phone photo so a bit crap)

Method:

Once zested, chop the lime zests fairly finely. Put the garlic, ginger, chilli, coriander, Nam Pla, salt and pepper into a pestle and mortar along with this chopped zest and pound lightly. Don't go as far as a smooth paste - rough and ready seems plenty enough.

Get the fish off it's skin and either pulse it in a blender till you have a roughish chop, or do as I did and run it through an old-skool worktop-mounted hand mincer using the coursest disc. The point is to get so it comes out finely chopped enough to be formed into little patties, but not so fine it's just a mush.

When all the fish is chopped, put it in a big bowl and add the seasoning from the pestle, along with the chives and the egg-white, a sprinkle of flour and a squib of tomato pureé. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty - mix it all up till you have a nicely even mix.

Heat a big non-stick frying pan to a medium heat and fill with sunflower oil to a depth of about a centimetre (1/3 of inch). When it's hot enough start making the cakes in the palm of your hand (about the size of a big walnut and drop them carefully into the hot oil. If it's hot enough it should sizzle, but you don't want the oil so hot that it's spitting. You are cooking quite a few here so it's maybe better not to put lots in at once so you have a panic when it's time to get them out again. I alternated the moving and turning of cakes with the making and adding new ones so there was always one about ready to take out to leave room for a new one to take it's place. I started off with a slice but a fork was best for moving turning and flatenning the slightly ball-like patties. Cook each one on both sides until they are nicely crisped on both sides and put them on to some kitchen roll to get any excess oil off.

Then eat them!
Dip them in sweet chilli sauce; drizzle lime juice over them; try satay sauce if you like...

Mmm...mnmm...nun...mnymm....ymm....