Thai food

Last Friday, we had Phyllis’s brother and his wife round for dinner.

I decided to cook a bit of Thai food, using my favourite Thai cookbook: Thailand: The Beautiful Cookbook.

At first, I was thinking about cooking just a curry, but I then read its section on composing a meal: “Most often, in addition to the obligatory bowl of rice, there will be a soup of some kind, a curry, a steamed dish, a fried one, a sald, and one or more of the basic sauces.”

That sounded a bit daunting, so as a compromise I decided to cook four dishes and serve them together: Fish cakes, prawn/pineapple curry, beef salad, and broccoli with oyster sauce.

They seemed to quite like it, but then it is an excellent cookbook.

Here’s how to make the fish cakes:

Mince 250 g white fish fillets with a knife. Mix the fish well with 3 tbsp red curry paste, 2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 eggs, 3 tbsp cornflour and ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda. Chop some fresh basil and mix it in. Shape the mixture into balls, 5 cm x 5 cm x 2½ cm, and let them rest in the fridge for a while. Then deep-fry them in hot oil (160°C).