Epic fishcake FAIL!!
I’m going to try to blog about food from now, whether it’s my own cooking, something a friend cooked for me, or something I ate at a restaurant. At least if I write about it hopefully I will come back to this and see what worked and what didn’t.
In tonight’s case of the fishcake, it didnt…
So I saw something on TV once about fishcake and it seemed simple enough to make. I had some sort of meaty white fish cutlets which I had thawed. Can’t remember what it was but I bought it whole and ate the back part as fillets steamed. Was nice.
I was left with 2 think cutlets so I thought I’d attempt to make fishcakes for the first time. Now if I was smart I would have Googled a recipe first. But I’m pretty good in the kitchen and I figured I could just put a few ingredients together that made sense.
So first I carefully took the flesh off the cutlets, making sure there was no skin or bone in the mix. Then I minced it up by hand. Done. The ingredients I added were some sweet chilli sauce, corn flour, minced ginger and corianda. Unfortunately I had no egg (whites) to use as a binding agent. I figured this should do though as the mix should harder in the pan as it cooked.
So I heat the pan and put some oil in. At this stage I put a small amount of the mix in my hand to try to shape it into a pattie. I wetness and texture should have told me something was wrong, but I had nothing to loose (except part of my dinner!).
In the pan the patties go and even after a minute when I tried moving them around in the pan I knew it was all wrong. The mix was just way too wet and soft to cook properly. I let them harden enough to turn them over. They had only been frying on a medium heat for maybe 3 minutes but when I turned one over it was all black, yet didn’t smell burnt. I figured that the sweet chilli sauce must discolour so I kept going.
A few minutes later I turned them over again. But as soon as I press on them the mix in the middle oozed out the sides and was still wet and raw. Somehow the hard, blackened surface was preventing the inside from cooking.
I left them in for a few more minutes but they just wouldn’t cook properly. And they just got progressively darker. So I stopped the pan and cut one open. The black crust was about half a cm thick and inside was raw. YUM!!!!
Straight in the bin.
So I just ate stirfry chinese veg and instant noodles (both of which I was eating anyway but would have been nice to have an entree).
What dawned on me as I was cursing was that because the fish was frozen and thawed that I should have squeazed all the moisture out of the fish before adding the ingredients. Then the mix would have not been so wet.
As to why it wet black so quickly and yet was not burnt I’m not sure.
Will check recipe next time before attempting something for the first time!
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