Carolina Fish Cakes

These fish cakes use breadcrumbs instead of mash potato – making them lighter

I have been making fish cakes for years using all sorts of combinations.
This recipe – Carolina Fishcakes – is based on the Carolina Crab Cakes recipe. Carolina is famous for it’s blue crabs.
It uses breadcrumbs instead of mashed potato. This gives a lighter texture to the fish cake. They are deliberately simple and easy to make (a basic speedy recipe) – but you can spice them up, if you want

Ingredients:

For 4 good fish cakes

1/2 kilo of Fish of your choice – I suggest 50% smoked fish and a white fish such as cod – but salmon works well too…
Home made breadcrumbs – top tip: leave 2 or 3 slices of bread, white or brown, out on a rack all day to dry out, then grind them into bread crumbs
Dessert spoon of mayonnaise
Seasoning
You can also add any spices etc. as you like…

Method:

Steam the fish until just cooked – 8 min
Heat oil in a frying pan for shallow frying – but not hot
Make your bread crumbs
In bowl mix the 1 slice of bread crumbed with the fish (check for bones) the mayonese and seasoning
Place the bowl in the fridge to cool – makes it easier to form them
Make 4 balls from the mix

Then in 3 bowls – one with flour in it, one with beaten egg in it, one with 1 slice of bread crumbed
Dip / roll the fish cake balls in the flour, then the egg…then change hands and roll in the bread crumbs…top tip – changing hands means your fingers don’t become caked with crumbs, only the fish cake

Place the fish cake balls into the frying pan and then flatten the fish cakes with the back of a slotted or flat turner to about 25 mm – 1 inch thickness
Cook slowly to make sure they are cooked through – about 5 min each side – they will brown up

Serving:

Serve with salad…
or in this case I have served with a simple tomato sauce (use up your old tomatoes) and some sliced natural beetroot, I like the earthiness flavour of plain beetroot (sweet pickled if you prefer), a slice of mozzarella and some kale…but however you want it…