It’s time to talk fishcakes.
As far as I’m concerned, there are three types of this fiendishly delicious food that I’m prepared to entertain.
- Delicious, deep fried fare from your favourite chip shop, best served with cheap white bread AND chips (c’mon) and a tea strong enough to blind you;
- Tiny, also deep fried, Thai fishcakes that you impulsively order with your Thursday night chicken penang takeaway and scoff, whole, with an ice cold Singha;
- THESE BEAUTIES.
Summer’s coming and I don’t think I need to say anything more except if you’re looking for something light, sophisticated, flavoursome, healthy AND delicious (honestly), get these on your dinner table and soon.
Sublime with a prosecco, some grilled veggies and the whiff of sophistication and superiority that eating this will give you.
Summer Fishcakes
Adapted from Ottolenghi’s codcakes and parpadelle recipe (we tried it with the parpadelle and tomato sauce once and thought it was a really weird combination, so we ditched it).
Serve with asparagus – lightly fried with salt, pepper and a good squeeze of lemon juice – and a green leaf salad with avocado.
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 small onion (diced)
- 1 large clove garlic or 2 small cloves (minced)
- 2cm piece ginger (peeled and finely chopped)
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground coriander
- 1/4 tsp turmeric
- 3 slices of white bread (crusts removed)
- 280-300g boneless cod fillet or other white fish (roughly chopped into chunks)
- 1/2 egg (beaten)
- Skin of 1/2 a small preserved lemon (rinse lemon under tap before removing the skin, and finely chop the skin), or substitute with zest from 1/4 lemon. The preserved lemon really works here though.
- Handful mint leaves (finely chopped)
- Handful parsley leaves (finely chopped)
- Salt
- Ground black pepper
Directions
- Heat up 1 tbsp of the oil in a frying pan. Add the diced onion and saute on a medium high heat for 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for a further minute. Then add the ginger and spices and cook for a final minute before taking off the heat. The mix will be quite a dry consistency.
- While the onion is cooking, get out your food processor and a large bowl. Whizz the bread into breadcrumbs and add to the bowl. Then add the cod into the processor and pulse it a few times so that it is roughly minced. Add this to the bowl too, along with the remaining ingredients and the spiced onion mix. Season well with salt and pepper.
- With your hands, combine the ingredients in the large bowl and check the consistency – it should be moist. If it feels very wet then add a bit of flour or remaining breadcrumbs just to dry it up a little.
- Heat up the remaining tbsp of olive oil in the frying pan on a medium high heat. While it’s heating up, turn the fishcake mix into patties of about 2cm thick and 6-7cm wide. You should get 5 patties out of the mixture. Add into the frying pan and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side until they are golden brown on the outside.
- Serve with a green salad of your choosing and some grilled asparagus.
MAD AVOCADO 
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