Too good to resist

Thai fish cakes are healthy enough to fit in with your January healthy-eating regime, and baked chocolate pears add a touch of indulgence, writes DOMINI KEMP

I’M TRYING TO remain in the zone of being good in January, but faltered somewhat when I made these fish cakes. Emboldened by the thought that such healthy food – full of the omega-3s we all need to eat more of – would not require a glass of wine, I invited my best pal Caroline over, confident we could stay on the green tea. But these fish cakes are one of those healthy dishes that are not necessarily anti-social, so we ended up having a glass or two of wine too many, as well as eating these pears baked with chocolate.

However, I consoled myself with the knowledge that salmon (especially wild salmon, if you can get it) is a really great source of omega-3s along with trout, mackerel and sardines. We often hear people talking about omega-3s and 6s as being really important, but unfortunately, most western diets tend to contain far too many omega-6s rather than 3s. When I can’t remember which is which, I just keep thinking of that De La Soul song, Three is the Magic Number, because it really is.

Researchers have discovered that people who consume plenty of omega-3s (such as Eskimos and the Japanese) seem to suffer far less from coronary heart disease and depression than people in other countries where levels of omega-3s are insufficient.

The list of conditions that benefit from this foodie superdrug is endless: it increases your HDL or “good cholesterol” and helps lower your blood pressure. Research is also beginning to demonstrate that omega-3s may play a role in fighting breast and colon cancer as well as helping to relieve depression and other mental health problems.

This is all great information to mull over while enjoying these delicious fish cakes, which are really more of a burger than cake. I tried pan-frying them, but then opted for an even healthier way of cooking them. By brushing them with a little olive oil and baking them, they stayed deliciously moist and contained very little excess oil. They are also quite nice to eat cold. The accompanying salad (a sort of kimchi-light) is great with half an avocado as a light lunchtime snack.

For dessert, these pears looked quite fancy, even though I carved out the pastry with a blunt knife and very little concentration. They were declared quite Christmassy, which I’m not sure isn’t some sort of back-handed compliment. Anyway, I put rather too much ginger in this recipe, and remembered that lots of people find it hard to find the stem ginger in syrup that I buy in my local food store. If that’s the case, you can always use a bar of Green Black’s dark chocolate with ginger.

Thai fish cakes

Serves 4-6

Ask your fishmonger to skin and roughly chop about 700g of salmon for you, so you end up with about 600g of skinned salmon chunks. You can also use trout or other fish in this. Also, the green beans I bought came in a pack of about 165g, so don’t get too hung up on the quantity. Use whatever is handy.

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 knob ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

1 stalk lemon grass, roughly chopped

Zest of 1 lime

Good pinch sugar

Few splashes of fish sauce

Salt and pepper

I bunch spring onions, very finely sliced

Olive oil

Approx 600g skinned salmon, cut into chunks

Approx 200g green beans

Put the onion, ginger, lemon grass, lime zest, sugar and fish sauce in a food processor and whizz until it makes a finely chopped paste. Add the spring onions and salmon and pulse until mixed enough that you can form them into fish cakes. You don’t want it to be total mush, but slightly chunkier than minced beef, if possible.

Slice the green beans very finely – about as finely as the spring onions – and then throw them in and season the whole mixture lightly. Mix with a spoon and then shape into eight decent-sized fish cakes. Place them on parchment paper on a baking tray. Drizzle each with a little olive oil and brush or rub it on with your fingers. Bake for about 12-15 minutes at 180 degrees/gas 4. They may brown ever so slightly on top, and they do cook quite quickly. Serve with the carrot salad and a squeeze of lime juice.

Winter carrot salad

Use the red chilli garlic sauce you can find in most supermarkets. It looks like an orangey kind of ketchup. A splash of sweet chilli sauce and half a clove of garlic will do if you can’t find it.

3 large carrots, peeled and grated

1 bunch spring onions, finely sliced

Small bunch of mint, coriander and basil, finely chopped

Dressing

200ml boiling water

2 tbsp brown sugar

3 tbsp fish sauce

Juice of 3 limes

Salt and pepper

2 tbsp chilli garlic sauce

Mix all the ingredients for the dressing together, and add the carrots. They will wilt down a little. Add the spring onions and herbs and serve. It’s fine to refrigerate this, and you may find you can add more grated carrot to make use of the dressing on the second day.

Baked chocolate pears

Serves 6

This is the type of recipe you could use odds and ends for. For example, I didn’t have any red wine, so I used a bottle of rosé wine that needed to go. Also, prunes couldn’t be found in my cupboard, so I used dried figs instead.

175g caster sugar

400ml water

300ml red wine

3 pears, peeled, cored and cut in half

Approx 100g puff pastry

Stuffing

Good knob butter

3 tbsp flaked almonds

1 tbsp brown sugar

6 prunes, stoned and thinly sliced

2 tbsp currants

100g dark chocolate

2 pieces of stem ginger in syrup, chopped

Preheat an oven to 220 degrees/gas 7. Heat the sugar, water and wine until the sugar has dissolved and then add the pears. If you have a small saucepan that’s reasonably tall, use that. Ideally, the pears will be submerged in the syrup. Simmer gently for about 10 minutes and then pull the pears out (try not to break them) and set them aside on a plate to cool.

If you want to be a little fancier, you could continue to reduce this syrup down until it becomes quite jammy so you can drizzle it over the finished dish.

To make the filling, melt the butter and add the almonds and brown sugar. Again, for extra flavour you could toast the almonds in a moderate oven for a few minutes, but I was too busy for such perfection, so don’t feel bad if you can’t be bothered. Add the prunes, currants and stem ginger. It will be a bit of a clumpy mess and will get worse. Break or chop the chocolate into chunks and then add to the saucepan. Ideally, you should do this in a non-stick pot. If not, then keep an eye on it. You don’t need much heat for the chocolate to melt. Mix as well as you can so that the dried ingredients have been evenly distributed in this rocky road-style mixture.

Roll out the pastry into six rectangles and then roll out each one a bit more, so that you can cut a pear shape out of each one, with a two-centimetre rim. Then place a tablespoon of the stuffing in the centre of each pastry pear and place the pear (core side down) on top. Press down gently so that you can’t see too much of the chocolate stuffing (don’t be tempted to top each pastry sheet with too much chocolate stuffing).

Bake the pears in the hot oven on a baking sheet with parchment paper for about 14 minutes. After 10 minutes, I brushed the pears and a bit of the pastry with some melted butter as it helps everything go a more unctuous colour.

Allow to cool slightly and serve. These also reheated very nicely in a warm oven. Serve with a little cream or ice-cream.