On Monday I was planning to make Thai Fish Cakes for dinner, but everything went pear shaped, and I got no further. On Tuesday things looked up and so I had a go at it. My kids love fish, providing it doesn’t have too many bones in it. I have made these a few times before and they always go down well.

The recipe is based on a recipe I saw on one of Rick Steins’ cooking shows, but please don’t ask me which one. It is not necessarily authentic, but it is yummy. Ideally you make it with fresh fish, but it is a little hard to come by here, so I buy frozen fillets and they work pretty well too.

Ingredients
3 Bread slices
1 lime zested and juice
2 garlic clove – roughly chopped
3 shallots – roughly chopped
1 chilli (or more to taste) – remove the seeds if you don’t like it hot
1/2 bunch mint (I don’t like fresh coriander and so tend to replace it with mint, but you could use half of each if you prefer) – leaves picked off
1 stem lemon grass – grated
2T fish sauce
600g boneless white fish fillets (eg perch)
1 egg
20 green beans cut into 1/2cm lengths (I used yellow beans from our garden, so you can’t see them)
oil for shallow frying

Method
1. Place bread slices in food processor and pulse for a few seconds or until it forms crumbs
2. Place the lime zest and juice, garlic, shallots, chilli, mint leaves, and lemon grass into the processor, and pulse until it is all finely chopped and combined.
3. Add in the fish, fish sauce, and egg, and pulse until well combined. The mixture should be slightly sloppy, but still retain its shape.
4. Stir through the green beans
5. Heat oil in a frypan.
6. Using wet dessert spoons, drop equal sized portions into the hot oil. Fry until golden and set. (the wet spoons will prevent the mix sticking).
7. Drain on paper towel.
8. Serve with sweet chilli sauce.

If you don’t have a food processor, just chop all the ingredients finely, and then combine them.