Thai-Style Fish Cakes with Salmon and Cod

Thai food hasn’t become one of the world’s ‘number one’ cuisines without reason. Its sublime tropical flavours rule. Thai fish cake recipes have delicious flavours, but can often be on the rubbery side and rather flimsy and small. So we took their spices and herbs and added them instead to fresh salmon and cod fillets, to create a more robust and juicy cake. Thai-Style Fish Cakes have become a huge favourite in our shop, served as a main with the Haricots Verts Salad with Roasted Walnuts and Parmesan Shavings (see recipe) and in the Thai-Style Fish Cakes with Avocado and Wasabi Mayo sandwich (see recipe).

Makes approximately 12 fish cakes.

Ingredients

40 g (1 ½ oz) ginger, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 medium red chilli pepper, trimmed, leaving seeds intact, and chopped

2 lime leaves, stalk and midrib removed, very finely chopped,

1 large stalk celery, finely chopped

1 green pepper (capsicum), cut into small cubes

2 French shallots, chopped

40 g (1 ½ oz) lemon grass (sereh), end removed, and super-finely chopped

¼ bunch fresh coriander (cilantro), stalks and leaves, super-finely chopped

300 g (10 ½ oz) fresh salmon, skinned and boned, half lightly mashed, half in small pieces

300 g (10 ½ oz) fresh cod, lightly mashed

30 g (1 oz) green beans (haricots verts), chopped into very small rounds

1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce

a pinch coarsely ground black pepper

as needed vegetable oil

Method

Place the ginger, garlic, chilli pepper, lime leaves, celery, green pepper, shallots and lemon grass in a food processor bowl. Blitz together until well mixed but not a paste. Transfer to a large bowl and add the fresh coriander, salmon, cod, green beans, fish sauce and pepper. Mix together, taking care to keep some of the fish chunky.

Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Place a large pan over medium heat, and add enough oil to cover the bottom by 2 cm (¾ inch). Using an ice cream scoop or similar, drop each cake carefully in the hot oil and brown on both sides until golden, about 2 minutes each side. Transfer the fish cakes to a wire rack set on top of an oven dish, and bake 10 minutes. Sweet chilli sauce goes perfectly with these little morsels. Do you have any extra fish cakes? See our Thai-Style Fish Cakes with Avocado and Wasabi Mayo sandwich recipe.