Delicious Thai Fish Cakes

“I love Thai fish cakes but never thought I would be able to make them so easily.  This recipe is really easy and through Jesse’s idea to try the local lime leaves, we have discovered another local ingredient that is free and tastes amazing!  The recipe calls for fresh Kaffir lime leaves which are not locally available so we grabbed a few leaves from the tree in Alice’s garden and shredded them with a knife.  The effect was simple quite amazing!”

Ingredients 
500 grams white fish meat, minced or chopped (we used the milk fish that you can get in any of the stores such as Aveina or Flymart) but Phil had to fillet them first which was a bit of a hassle.  We used the meat from 2 fish (plus one mahi mahi steak that I had in the freezer), the end result was 10 delicious fish cakes.

1 egg

1/2 cup local string beans, chopped finely
3 tbsp. fresh lime leaves, minced or chopped (find someone who has a lime tree)










1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. of red curry paste (Sometimes they have this in Laufou but not at the moment so this is a good thing to bring from off island.  I used green curry paste and it worked fine).  You can also make Thai curry paste from scratch.
3 cups cooking oil for frying

Preparation:
Put all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well knead by hand until it sticks.  Don’t worry if it seems sloppy.  I thought mine was too sloppy but if you form the cakes in your hand and drop them straight into the hot oil, they cook fine.
Form patties (about 3" in diameter) and deep fry in vegetable oil until golden brown.  This takes 3 – 5 mins for each fish cake.  I drained them into kitchen paper to get rid of the excess oil.

Serve with sweet chilli sauce or cucumber relish.

Ingredients for Cucumber Relish:
1 cup diced cucumber
1/2 cup ground roasted peanuts
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup white vinegar or rice wine vinegar

Preparation:
Mix sugar and vinegar in the pot and heat.
When the mixture comes to the boil, remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Spoon into a cup, add diced cucumber, tomato and top with ground peanuts.