Kind of Thai Fishcakes

Just a quick recipe for you tonight that I made for me and my flatmate last night. We had a Thai inspired meal of fishcakes and stir-fried veg.

I'll be honest, it was my first time making these fishcakes and I completely made up the recipe so they still need a little bit of work, but I vowed to share my kitchen successes and failures on this blog so you're going to get it anyway!! Not that this was a failure - it was pretty nice, just not gobsmackingly beautiful - so why don't you play around with the recipe a little and you might find something more delicious than mine!



  
Serves 3 (us two and my dinner tonight!)

 

Ingredients

3 small portions of potato, peeled and chopped
1 stalk of lemongrass
your choice of stir fry veg, chopped - I used cabbage, pepper, broccoli and carrot
1 teaspoon sugar
splash of rice wine vinegar
3 fillets of white fish
3 teaspoons Thai Green curry paste (if you spend a little more on a better paste then this is more than enough because it'll be full of flavour, but if it's a cheapo one then you might need a little more!)
a handful of fresh coriander, chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
sea salt and black pepper
1/2 lime, squeezed
 olive oil 
1 small egg
plain flour
a drizzle of soy sauce
sweet chilli sauce (to serve)

Begin by getting a pan of water boiling on the hob. Slightly squash your lemon grass with the flat of your knife to release the flavours, then add to the pan whole (or in half if too long!). My intention here is to flavour the water - and subsequently the potato - with these gorgeous citrus flavours without them overpowering the fishcake.


Prepare all of your stir-fry veg and put in a bowl. Mix in the sugar and rice wine vinegar and leave to one side for later.

Then, spread the green curry paste over your fish fillets. Place them on a baking tray and wrap loosely with silver foil. This needs to go in a preheated oven until just cooked and flaky (probably at about 180 degrees for around 10-20mins depending on the size of your fillets).
  
Add your chopped potato to the pan of water and boil until soft (about 10mins).


Once the fish is cooked, remove from the oven and flake into a large bowl. Add the chilli, coriander and lime juice, and season with salt and pepper.

Once soft, drain the potatoes and remove the lemongrass stalk. Add a drizzle of olive oil and mash. Then add the potato to your fish bowl, mixing together.


Sprinkle your flour onto a flat surface. When the ingredients in your bowl are cool enough to touch, crack your egg into the bowl and combine with your hands. Collect a small handful into a ball and squash between the palms of your hands to make a fishcake shape. Lightly dip both sides into the flour and put on a plate ready to fry. Repeat until you have created all of your fishcakes.







Add a drop of olive oil into a pan (I used a griddle pan) and pop your fishcakes in. Cook for a couple of minutes on each side.

For your veg, simply add it to a wok with a dash of olive oil and soy sauce. Cook for a couple of minutes until the veg is starting to soften, but still with some crunch!



Serve up and enjoy with some sweet chilli sauce!

My best ever Fried Rice Recipe

The other night I made the best fried rice ever... it was tasty, healthy, cheap, easy and lasted me a dinner and two lunches! With just a few bits of veg I had left over in my fridge and a selection of Thai flavours I concocted this yummy dish, and I really didn't expect it to go quite this well... It was that good I probably won't be able to recreate it, but I've done my best to write a bit of a recipe for it here so that you can have a go and so I can try and remember how I did it!! Apologies for the big headedness - you will just have trust me that this was just THAT good!

Ingredients (don't trust these completely, alter as you wish, and feel free to add whatever veg you like!)

Serves 2-3
two white fish fillets (I actually just used cheapo frozen white fish!)
1 portion of rice (about 1/3 cup)
1 large carrot, grated
2 teaspoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
2 eggs
olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
about half a broccoli (cut the florets into small pieces)
2 lemon grass stalks, chopped finely
1 garlic clove, chopped finely
1 chilli, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
3spring onions, chopped
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of Thai sweet chilli sauce
salt and pepper
a large handful of fresh coriander, chopped roughly

Recipe (or something similar!)

Bake the fish in the oven for 15-20mins depending on the size of the fillets. Boil a pan of water and add your rice. Cook until it is soft and then drain. Mix the grated carrot with the sugar and white wine vinegar. Crack the eggs into a jug and whisk with a fork. Leave all these to the side for later.

Put a dash of oil in your wok over a medium-high heat, then add the onion and broccoli and fry until the onion starts to soften a little.

Then add lemon grass, garlic, chilli and red pepper and fry for a couple of minutes.

Add the carrot mixture and spring onions and fry for a further minute before tipping the veg into a bowl, leaving the wok empty.


Put another dash of olive oil into the wok and add your whisked eggs. Keep moving it around with a wooden spoon until the eggs begin to cook, making sure that none of it sticks to the pan.

Add the ready cooked rice and mix in. Make sure all of the egg is cooked, then add your veg mixture.

Mix in your soy and sweet chilli sauces and season with salt and pepper.

Finally, throw in as much coriander as you like (it's my favourite herb and an essential flavour to this dish!), mix altogether and serve.

YUM!!!!!

Birthday Meal at Thai Square, Covent Garden

The restaurant

My favorite food is Thai... Thai curries, Thai spiced fish and meat, Thai veggies, Thai everything! I love the fresh zingy flavours and the fact that you can absolutely stuff your face and still feel reasonably healthy!

So I was extremely pleased that my lovely fella took me to a Thai restaurant for my birthday Saturday night. We ordered far too much food and ate all of it, and I think my only real negative for the evening was where we were sitting... because the food was fantastic!

The picture above (taken from Thai Square website as I forgot my camera! http://thaisquareserver.co.uk/) doesn't really show how richly decorated the place is inside. And unfortunately, we couldn't really appreciate the decor from our seats either. We were sat right at the front of the restaurant, not the very first row of tables so you're sat next to the window, but the next row back kind of tucked away in a corner. This was mildly frustrating as we booked way in advance, knowing it was a Sat night in London, and we were hoping to be right in the middle of all the atmosphere towards the back of the restaurant. But hey, we stopped caring as soon as we had a glass of white wine and Singha beer in front of us!

The Food

We always always have the sharing platter if there's an option; both love to taste a few different things for a starter/ can never pick which dish we want to try more! I can honestly say that this was the best Thai sharing platter I've ever had... the chicken satay was rich in flavour with the right amount of crunch; the Thai fish cakes were flavourful yet delicate... and just yummy; the duck spring rolls had a beautifully crispy filo pastry with plenty of stuff in the middle; the prawn tempura was so juicy with the lightest batter... probably my favorite one of this dish; and the Thai Dim Sum dissolved into flavour in my mouth. So off to a fantastic start, I wish I had a photo for you! The only thing that it was maybe missing was a funky shaped carrot so I could mop up the different sauces!!

For mains we had a monk fish green curry from the chefs specials, which was delicious. I very often go for a green curry and every time after ordering I think 'damn it I should have had something different'. And then it comes and the taste is just that good, that I know I'll order it again next time! Having monk fish was a special treat though, and it was seriously good, flake in the mouth stuff!

We also had beef Pad Kee Mao - spicy noodles... And damn they were spicy!! It does warn on the menu and normally we're both pretty good with hot flavours, but wow, I think we over estimated our love for hot food here. We both continued to eat it and the beef was delicious, but there were several rather large chunks of chilli that were blow your head off hot, and kind of stole away from the other flavours. Definitely did not ruin the meal though, and gave us quite a giggle at how bad we were at picking dishes!

We picked very well for our third and final main course dish, however... a dish they call Drunken Duck (battered marinated duck topped with home-made special whiskey sauce). It was unbelievably good - a teeny bit fatty as would be expected from duck, but the crunch of the batter was enough to keep the texture from feeling stodgy. But the flavour... oh the flavour... it somehow reminded me of American food, but only the stuff we love about American food, and having the fresh, zingy flavours of Thai food stopped it from being, well, y'know... American! There was something very satisfying about the mixture of traditional Thai green curry and this dish, that I wouldn't have immediately recognised as Thai, but that was quite simply, yummy!!!

So after all of that, we were just too full for any dessert and had to waddle back home. It was a lovely meal, slight shame about the setting, but I'd certainly go back. The menu was vast and had a load of other dishes I'd love to try, like the chef special Goong Fai Dang (Prawns with Whiskey) and some of their salads, so a definite one for the future. There are also several Thai Square retaurants dotted about London, so maybe next time I'll try a different one to mix it up!