So, Thai fishcakes and garlic bread, both of which I made this week at Boyfriend's house, as part of my Teach Him Cooking initiative. I have to say, he did a lot of this himself and both dishes turned out brilliantly.
Thai Fishcakes
Boyfriend and I made this for our supper, and served it up to his mum as well. She loved it, which was a big relief for me - cooking for any mother is always an anxious time, and the other half's mother is the most nailbiting of all! We used the recipe from Real Cooking by Nigel Slater. By the way, in case you're wondering, this is not my only cookbook. It is, however, the Boyfriend's only cookbook, so whenever I cook with him we use it: hence its frequent appearances on these pages.
Fishcakes, like many things, almost all follow a basic recipe. Poach the fish, often in milk; mix with mashed potatoes and herbs and flavourings of your choice; form into fishcake shapes with your hands; possibly dip in flour, beaten egg, breadcrumbs (in that order); fry in shallow hot oil and enjoy.
These fishcakes, however, followed a slightly different method, which to my mind made them much more authentically Thai. The flavourings (chilli, lemongrass, garlic, shallott, ginger, nam pla - thai fish sauce, if you were wondering - coriander, salt and pepper) were pulsed into a slush in the food processor, as was the raw fish. We then combined the two by hand in a bowl (fishy fingers, lovely), made fishcakes out of the raw fish with a little flour to stop it sticking to our hands, and shallow fried these to eat. This did mean we had to be careful that they were cooked right the way through as well as being nice and crispy on the outside, but on the plus side the lack of potatoes made them waistline-friendly. Sadly, we immediately cancelled this out by serving them with roast potatoes.
We also served them with a green leaf salad and, most importantly, the dipping sauce included in the recipe, which was an absolute stunner and very simple to make. Vinegar and sugar heated up until syrupy, then add soy sauce and chopped chilli, garlic and coriander. Genuinely beautiful.
Once again, I'm sorry not to include a recipe, but you can find it in Nigel Slater's Real Cooking. He should definitely be paying me for the promotion.
Garlic Bread
Really just so I have an actual recipe for you today, I thought I'd mention the garlic bread we made a couple of days ago also. I should stress that this is not meant as an accompaniment for the fishcakes...
Garlic bread may be readily available in supermarkets everywhere, freezable and all, but it's also pretty easy to make if you're feeling saintly. Made all the easier in this case by the fact that we had lunch at Pizza Express and blagged some of their garlic butter to use!
If you aren't best friends with the staff at your local pizza emporium, you might want to thoroughly crush some garlic, mix it with salt and mash it into some butter until it's thoroughly combined.
After the garlic butter-obtaining stage, its easy. Grab a baguette and cut some slits in it, as if you were slicing it but don't go all the way through. Shove some butter into each slit, wrap the whole mess in some tin foil and bake it until it's a bit crispy and all the butter has melted. Munch.
Recipe for Garlic Bread
Ingredients:
Garlic
Sea salt
Butter
A Baguette or two
Recipe:
1. Mash together the crushed garlic, salt and butter until thoroughly combined.
2. Cut slits into the baguette
3. Put some butter into each slit
4. Bake in a hot oven, wrapped in tinfoil, until crispy and until the butter has melted.
thanks for the recipe. If you had pictures or visuals it would have been more better .Anyways, thanks
ReplyDelete