Seeing as Sharon trailed this recipe I may as well put it up. I can remember the first time I saw Rick Stein make these on TV and saying he reckoned they would become one of his most popular recipes. I immediately tracked down the recipe!
Tod nam pla as these small, moreish fish cakes are known, are often absent from the menus of Thai restaurants or, more frustratingly, written down but scored out or not available! I think they're just keeping them to themselves. I have no idea how authentic Rick's recipe is, but it's an easy one to put together provided you have a food processor and a sharp knife or mandoline.
We're fortunate here in Edinburgh to have a number of good Asian stores, the biggest and best being Pat's Chinese supermarket down Leith Walk. It's far better value buying a big tub of Mae Ploy red curry paste; a large bottle of Squid brand fish sauce; cylinders of the hard palm sugar that you need to saw through: all these are things which hang around our fridge and cupboards just waiting to be used. I may do an entry on what we have in our cupboards because it means you're only ever a couple of fresh ingredients away from cooking up something tasty.
The recipe is here so I don't need to write it down. Coley is a flaky fish, not unlike cod or haddock. Coley is a rare enough find (we recently got some from Caledonian Connisseurs, sourced from Kerachers of Perth) so use cod if you restrict your shopping to supermarkets. I tried replacing the green beans with asparagus but it didn't taste quite as nice. The dipping sauce makes the dish, the sweetness and crunch of the vegetables balancing the slightly spongy texture of the fish cakes.
While we normally serve these as a starter, usually with a token salad (every mouthful of salad being just a filler until the next mouthful of fish cake) they could make a main course or splendid summer lunch with something like the robust green papaya salad that I recently discovered.
Cost: 7/10
Preparation time: 5/10 (one for the weekend)
Ease of cooking: 9/10
Taste: 9/10
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