Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen today I am making a classic recipe that is long long overdue
I'm making Thai fish cakes or Tod mun pla so Tod mun is a firm for any sort of fried meat patty the
protein patties and pla is fish now this is a classic Street food that you can find all over
Thailand and it's actually pretty easy to make two great appetizers spicy and chewy let's get
started so I'm going to start with the dipping sauce and this is the same idea as that Thai
sweet chili sauce and you can find in the bottles of grocery stores you know what I'm talking about
and you could use that if you're feeling lazy but it's better if you make it so I've got here a big
chili so I think this is a special I know it's put in my freezer for a while and I forgot to
label it so hopefully this is not too spicy so any sort of red big chili that's not too spicy
would work for this if you can't find anything even red bell pepper will do so I'm just going
to cut this into little chunks right in there and hmm it's not very spicy so and that's important
because it determines whether I need to add more Thai chilies or not so then I'm going to
add these Thai chilies just to make it spicier if you want to make it mild just stick with the
mild chilies and then some cloves of garlic and then to this I'm going to add some water to help
it blend and some vinegar traditionally we use white vinegar basically the only kind of vinegar
we use in Thai cuisine but today I'm using keen vinegar this is Filipino cane vinegar which is
awesome because it's quite smooth so I find it's not as jarring as white vinegar can be a Filipino
vinegar what else I need a little bit of salt and some sugar lots of sugar because this is a sweet
and sour sauce so you need the sugar to balance out the vinegar and that's it I'm going to blitz
now be careful when you open this do not inhale right over it because Chili's plus vinegar you
don't want that oh I can smell it from here and for this like if you have a super blender like a
Vitamix I wouldn't use it because I really want to keep a chili feed and some chili specks in
there too close for for visuals if you use a super blender you just blitz everything into a smoothing
and it's just not as pretty all right I'm going to bring this to a simmer and let it simmer for
about three to five minutes to cook the garlic cook the Chili's and reduce the sauce a little
bit so it has some viscosity in it so while my dipping sauce is simmering in the back I'm going
to make the fish cakes which is really really easy the hardest part is getting the right fish now in
Thailand we always use a kind of fish called black guy and it's almost the only thing that that fish
is used for like to the point where I don't even know what's like I paste like in not fish cake
form so here what I use is basa so what you want for this is something that is tender if you get
a fish that's firm when you make it it will be firm to firm almost so basa is good I suspect
so bigger tsubasa is a type of catfish so if you can get catfish in your neck of the woods we can't
get catfish in Canada believe it or not so try catfish that might work as well so I've cut up
the fish hey check out my brand new food processor I got this a Christmas blue now the main seasoning
for fish cakes is red curry paste you can make it yourself or you can buy it but I would caution you
against a brand that you know is quite salty with this one I'm not going to add any fish
sauce and I know it'll be fine so if it's your first time you probably have to taste a little
bit of the mixture so cook the mixture up taste it see if you need to add extra fish sauce okay
to make it tender I'm going to add an egg yolk so a little bit of sugar to balance the old and
you want to make sure the fish is very very cold because the processing is going to add some heat
Accio so you actually want to keep this going for longer than you might think because at first when
you blend it it's gonna you know it's going to be smooth and fine but it's going to be a little too
runny the more you process it the more you sort of develop the protein and make it fits what you're
looking for is for it to be able to hold its shape basically if you hold it up it shouldn't
like it should hold its shape it shouldn't run it shouldn't jiggle should be able to form a cake
basically so to add aroma and crunch I'm going to add some long beans which I chopped up into little
little pieces and I've also got some Thai basil which I've chopped roughly if you're in the place
where you can get holy basil that's really good as well chopped kaffir lime leaves this is key right
here some citrusy aroma you know citrus and fish always go well together right all of this stuff
going in lit yes you want it to be bouncy and jiggly just like that see if you can imagine back
in the day they used to make this using mortar and pestle like they some people still do that
today pound the fish in a mortar pestle until it's bouncy like this lots of labor mix all of that in
so traditionally these fish cakes are deep-fried but this is one of the few things where the deep
frying doesn't actually benefit the end result at all because we're frying these make it so there's
no cross nothing to get crispy street vendors do it because it's a lot faster but when you're
at home like me you can just pan fry it shallow fries the most important thing is do not touch it
with dry hands because it'll stick like nobody's business so everything that touches this has to
be wet wet my hand and wet my spoon and form just about you can make it however whichever size you
want I don't like it too thin some people make it really thin I just find it's not as it's not
as satisfying to chew in the pan oh that's hot so far I'm telling you this stove so powerful
and that's it then you fry them on both sides it will only take a minute or two how easy is that
check these out so the dipping sauce I want to show you the dipping sauce that was simmering
you know just three to five minutes and this is basically the consistency you're going for it is
a little runny er than the stuff you find in the bottle and that's what you want because it's quite
strong you just want it to thinly coat the fish cake you don't want it like too thickly loop on
to the fish case so this is actually perfect now to dress up this dipping sauce a little bit I've
got here the classic accompaniment some sliced cucumber some shallots thinly sliced shallots and
also some roasted ground peanuts but the peanuts and the shallots are optional I think it makes
it look nicer and gives it you know a little more complexity and it's still warm that's great it's
going to sort of views we wilt the shallots a little bit excited because good that looks mmm
I'm going to go in with my hands get that and I also going to put just a piece of cucumber
on it that is better than in Thailand and I'm not even I know that's a bold statement but seriously
solo and and I'm saying is because in Thailand a lot of times bate they fry it and they make
it so thin and it becomes a little bit leathery and dry and I think the fish makes a difference
so I think the boss has even more tender than them the kind of fish that we use and
it gives this this really nice silky texture but it's still firm enough to hold its shape
go so well with that crunch from the Thai basil and that dipping sauce that you can
dip anything in Batam it'll be good so I hope you give it a try as you can see it's not that
hard experiment with different kinds of fish I tried this with rockfish I believe and it wasn't
great like it was wasting sperm so if one fish doesn't quite work out try a different things
and definitely let me know also let me know in the comments if you've had success with other
fish and the recipe as always will be on husk I am calm when you make it send me a photo on
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