Thai Fish Cake

I like to buy tenggiri fish to make fish paste/fish balls/fish cake. After using the flesh from one fish, I can use the bones to make soup. And then the skin can be fried till crispy and eaten as an appetiser. You basically use up the whole fish and nothing is wasted.

I found an easy fish cake recipe from a bilingual magazine I purchased recently titled "Ground Meat Snacks", published by Famous Cuisine. Very interesting recipes and step-by-step pictures in there. If you can read Chinese, do visit their website here.

Here's the recipe which I made drastic changes to (in terms of quantity of ingredients :P )

Thai Fish Cakes

(written with permission)

A

500g mackeral fish fillet (my one fish weighs 500g. Thus the flesh was only 236gm. So I halved the seasoning)

100g big onions - chopped (1/2 a small yellow onion)

120g long beans - diced (1 strand long bean. Up to your preference)

8 bird's eye chillies - chopped (omitted)

1 red chilli - chopped (omitted)

3 blades kaffir lime leaf - finely shredded (2 leaves)

B

1 TBSP tapioca flour (1/2 TBSP)

egg white from one egg (1/2 of the egg white)

C

1 tsp fish sauce (1/2 tsp)

1 tsp sugar (1/2 tsp)

1 tsp pepper (a dash white pepper)

1 tsp salt (1/2 tsp)

1/2 tsp chicken stock granules (omitted)

Note: words in (red) are my own

I snipped the long bean and lime leaves to small pieces using a kitchen scissors.

Mince the onion.

Slice the fish on both sides from tail to head and scoop out the flesh. Keep the bones for later use to make anchovy fish soup.

Deep fry the skin and eat them immediately ;)

I used a hand-held blender to blend the fish paste with B & C till smooth and sticky. You may put them in a food processor. After that, mix in the rest of the ingredients from A. Place in a bowl covered with cling wrap and keep in the fridge till ready to use.

Bring fish mixture to room temperatue (30 minutes) before deep frying. Depending on how big you want your fish cakes, scoop some onto your wet palm and form into patties. Deep fry till golden brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels. Serve with Thai chilli sauce or Maggi garlic chilli sauce, or mayo & Lingham chilli sauce :)

My long bean burnt a little... but it was so good. I love the chewy and moist texture. Could have been better with the chilli padi I'm sure,

but for sunny boy....we got to do without :(

I will definitely make this again, maybe 2 versions huh, one extra spicy and one w/out chilli.