Todd Mun Plah – Thai Fish cake

                Thai fish cakes are different from American fish cakes.  We eat it as a snack, appetizer and with rice as an entrée.  Thai fish cakes use just crunched fish and knead with curry paste until you get the right texture.  So our Thai fish cakes have an elastic texture, but in a good way not crumbling like American fish cakes.  We also serve it with a dipping sauce that is made from cucumber and chicken dipping sauce (recipe in grill chicken blog) to make the dish complete.

Today I decide to make this dish, because one of my friends asked me in the facebook how to make Todd Mun Plah or Thai fish cake…. So I called my mom and asked her about how to make it because I have never made it before.  This recipe came from my great-grand mother.  She used to sell this food in Thailand when she was alive and her recipe is the most famous in town!!!  For me it seemed very hard the first time I saw her make it when I was a kid, but after my mom told me the recipe it does not seem too hard it just needs a little bit of technique to make it have the right texture.  Actually this recipe needs white ocean fish the best fish for this is grey fish but I can’t find it around my house, so this time I used salmon (very easy to find in the supermarket) the taste will be a little bit of a fishy taste rather then made with white mild fish.  I have to put more Thai basil in to balance the fishiness taste.  Here’s the recipe!!!

Ingredients

1 lb fish (white mild ocean fish is the best)

4 tbsp. curry paste

1 ½ cup green bean chopped

½ cup Thai basil leaves finely chopped

1 egg

4 tbsp. sugar

1 tbsp. fish sauce

1 tsp. salt dissolved into 1 tbsp. ice cold water

2 cups of vegetable oil for deep fry

1 cup ice for cooling the mixture during mixing

Cooking instructions

1.       Cut fish into small pieces then put it in a blender. Blend it until smooth

2.       In the extra-large bowl  pour 1 cup of ice and  a ½ cup of water then put the mixing bowl inside

3.       Remove the fish into a mixing bowl pour ice cold salted water into fish and knead it about 2 minutes.

4.       Add egg into it and continue kneading another 1-2 minute

5.       Add red curry paste continue kneading until curry paste mixed well with mixture then add sugar and fish sauce knead until mixed well

6.       Add green beans and Thai basil then mix it until mixed well.

Note : at this point if you want to test the taste of it just take ¼ tbsp. of mixture and microware it, if you don’t like the taste add more sugar or fish sauce if needed.

7.       Heat up vegetable oil in the pan about 350 degree or test by using a bamboo stick dip into hot oil, if you see a bubble air come out from stick it means the oil is ready to be fried.

8.       Use one table spoon scoop the mixture from a mixing bowl then another table spoon, scoop mixture out from that spoon into oil.

9.       Fried it about 2 minutes per side or until it cooked (the color will change to darker and it will come up to the surface then you can turn it.)  

10.    Serve with cucumber dipping sauce

Cucumber dipping sauce

1 cucumber

¼ cup grill chicken dipping sauce

1.       Cut cucumber into quarter slice it into small pieces (like picture) put it into bowl.

2.       Pour grill chicken sauce over cucumber then let it sit about 2 minutes.

Now how to eat it.  You have to dip the fish cake into cucumber sauce and eat it with the same bite to bring all of the flavor come together the best!!!

Curry Tart

            This dish actually is a snack in Thailand called “Ka Ree Pup”.  It has chicken potato and curry powder filling.  I believe Thai people get this recipe from western style cooking because Thai food doesn’t use fried dough and potato.  “Ka Ree pup” is very popular in one of our cities called “Sara-buri”, like when you go there you have to buy it for a souvenier (yes… in Thailand a lot of our souvenier’s are food).  In the original recipe you need a special dough that just tastes like fried pie filling with potato chicken curry stuffing.  It tastes savory and you cannot have just one!!!  For me I don’t know how to make the original dough on the outside, so I tried to make it my modern Thai Food way and I discovered 2 ways that came out pretty good.  My 1^st way is to use a frozen puff pastry and it came out very good and the second one I made a tiny little tart (recipe from better home and garden 2000 cook book) and put the stuffing back in it and it tasted good and looked cute too. So let’s get started!!!

Ingredients

Stuffing

1 cup chicken breast ground or cut into ¼ inch cube (for vegetarian use mushrooms)

2 cup cooked potato cut into ¼ inch cube

1 cup dice onion cut

1 cup dice cooked carrot (if you don’t like it leave it out)

2 tbsp. curry powder (or 1 tbsp. turmeric powder)

2 tbsp. sugar

1-2 tbsp. salt

2- tsp. ground pepper

1 tsp. oil

Cooking instructions

1.      Heat large pan on medium high heat add oil wait unit the oil hot add onion stir it till it is cooked

2.      Add chicken and 1 tsp. sugar, salt, pepper  stir it until cooked

3.      Add cooked carrot and potato then add sugar, salt, pepper and curry powder stir it until mixed well.

4.      Adjust the taste till you like turn the heat off let it cool before filling

Tart

½ cup cold butter

1 ¼  cups all-purpose flour

1 beaten egg yolk

2-3 tbsp. Ice water

Cooking instructions

1.      In a mixing bowl cut butter into flour till pieces are pea-size. Stir together egg yolk and 1 tbsp. Ice water.  Gradually stir egg yolk mixture into flour mixture.  Add remaining water, 1 tbsp. at a time. till all the dough is moistened. Gently knead the dough just till a ball forms.

2.      Divide the dough into a small size about 1 inch diameter and mole into small muffin pan use your finger to make a cup shape.

3.      Bake in 375 F about 15 minute or until golden brown.

4.      Let it cool. When it’s cool stuff with chicken curry stuffing garnish with cilantro and thin slice bell pepper.