First Time Lucky

You know that happy little feeling you have inside when you’re trying to do something you’ve never done before, and you suspect you could well end up falling flat on your face, but then you don’t, and you succeed beyond what you thought you would? Well, I had that little feeling today. And it felt good. A nice way to start the weekend.

Okay, it was no big deal – I made fish cakes… salmon fish cakes to be precise. Still, I felt quite proud of myself. I had never made fish cakes (i.e. those along the lines of crab cakes, and not the regular Chinese fish cakes sold in the markets and supermarkets here) before. I had mentioned in my “ramekin” post that I was thinking of making salmon fish cakes with the leftover breadcrumbs. I have actually been thinking about making salmon fish cakes for months, but have just never gotten around to looking for a recipe from which to make them.

Yesterday a girlfriend had called to say she wanted to stop by and drop off some stuff, so I invited her and her 5 year old little girl over for lunch today. I would make something light I said. As it turned out, events of this morning didn’t give me time to cook. So I needed to make something quick and easy. I decided to make the salmon fish cakes – sans recipe. I was just going to fly by the seat of my pants.

Took out a piece of salmon fillet from the freezer (approximately 350g), and left it to thaw while I busied myself with whatever it was that I had to be busy with. By the time I returned to the kitchen, the salmon was ready to be cut into approximately 1 cm cubes. Can you believe I even vacillated as to what sized cubes to cut the salmon into? I wanted the salmon dice to be bigger, but was afraid they wouldn’t “stick” nicely together to form well-shaped cakes. I didn’t want to cut them too small because they would cook too easily, and I really, really cannot stand over-cooked, dried-out salmon. And so I settled on the in-between size of 1 cm. Ha! So, now I know how some of those cookbooks come up with instructions like “dice celery into 7mm cubes”! Anyway, that is another story.

With the salmon all nicely cut, I was stuck as to how I wanted to flavor it. Time was short, so I fell back on my old perennial favorite... the marinade for my hoisin sauce salmon. I didn’t want the salmon too “wet”, so only 2 heaping teaspoons of hoisin sauce and a generous sprinkling of pepper went into the fish. I left it to sit for a few minutes while I chopped up a sizeable bunch of coriander.

In went the chopped coriander, and the leftover bread (crumbled into coarse crumbs with the fingers). I don’t know how much breadcrumbs there was. I simply emptied the whole zip-lock bag worth of leftover bread. If I was to hazard a guess, I’ll say maybe between ½ and ¾ cup? However, after seeing and tasting the final result, I would say breadcrumbs are not really necessary. I think the cakes will hold together fine without any binder, as long as they have had enough time to sit in the fridge before being pan-fried.

Once the salmon, coriander and breadcrumbs were evenly mixed, I immediately formed them into cakes of approximately 2 to 2½ inches across and around ¾ to 1 inch thick. Each of the five salmon cakes was individually wrapped in cling film and molded into the desired pattie shape. It’s best not to form and wrap them into ball-shaped cakes, as there will be difficulties, when the time comes to cook them, in flattening them out without them breaking apart. The cakes went back into the fridge, to allow the shapes to set and to allow the fish to macerate a little longer in the marinade. I left them in the fridge for around 40 minutes. But if there is time, I think 1-2 hours would be ideal, and then the cakes can do without the breadcrumbs, and still hold their shape nicely.

With the salmon out of the way, I started worrying about a condiment for the fish cakes. It just felt too plain and boring to serve salmon cakes on their own. What to do? What to do? The simplest thing I could think of was a light, refreshing, maybe piquant salsa of some kind, to balance out the rich fattiness of the salmon meat.

I settled on a cucumber chilli salsa…

First, one Japanese cucumber was finely diced. Then, I had to play around with the flavorings, as I did not even have any concrete ideas about what I was trying to achieve. I was just going along, hoping to create something that tasted good.

The quantities are thus, once again, very “agak” (estimations by sight), as I was adding and re-adding as I tasted and mixed. To cut a long story short, at the end of it, I had used approximately 2 tablespoons Thai sweet chilli sauce (for its nice chunky texture with chilli flakes and seeds), 1 tablespoon Lingham’s chilli sauce (to give more body to the sauce and balance out the weak, liquidy body of the Thai chilli sauce), ½ tablespoon of tomato ketchup (for a touch of tangy overtones), ½ tablespoon of white rice vinegar, ¼ to ½ teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of salt. Everything was mixed together with the cucumbers, and popped back into the fridge to chill and macerate. It would have been really nice to have been able to add some finely diced fresh red chillis and fresh pineapple, but I had neither on hand. Still, the salsa worked really well with the salmon cakes.

The cakes were fried up after my friend arrived. And I had the wonderful help of a little 5 year old sous-chef. Each cake was dipped in some lightly beaten eggs, and then coated with panko (Japanese breadcrumbs), before being pan-fried in a non-stick frying pan with very little oil - just a few tablespoonfuls for the whole batch – until it was a rich golden brown on both sides.

My biggest concern while frying the cakes was that maybe I had made the cakes too thick, and that the centers were not going to get cooked through. As it turned out they came out just right. I was really surprised how much so. The salmon was just about cooked through… right on that borderline between being undercooked and overcooked. Ha! What fluke! What luck! But I think it helped that I used a very low flame to fry the cakes, so it gave enough time to cook the fish while the cakes were browning. I also think it was quite important that the cakes were not flipped until one side had reached the desired color. I just feel it would have worked less well if I had kept flipping the cakes.

The cucumber salsa-ish condiment - sweet, tangy, piquant, crunchy - worked really well with the salmon cakes. The fish was nicely moist, juicy and tender.

As for the little one, I made her a salmon burger. I simply split a small wholemeal soft dinner roll, and lightly toasted it in the toaster oven. Added the salmon fish cake and a dash of tomato ketchup. Her verdict? She declared it the “best hamburger she has ever eaten”. So juicy she said. Her only complaint… I didn’t have any fries to offer her. But she was willing to settle for some potato crisps (if you’re English) or chips (if you’re American).

Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the mini salmon burger. The little one had watched with spellbound fascination as I took pictures of the salmon cakes. She too wanted to take her own picture of her salmon burger. Alas, a little too much camera shake and her picture didn’t turn out. She was disappointed, but we promised we would make these “pink hamburgers” (as she called it) again soon. And I do think these salmon cakes would make great “adult burgers” too – maybe with a mango salsa, pineapple salsa or onion marmalade, and with sweet potato fries on the side.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
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