Brazilian Fishcakes with Molho

I like to make fishcakes whenever I have leftover cooked fish, sometimes from a whole fish we’ve put on the barbecue or baked in the oven. Turn leftover fish into Brazilian fishcakes, for a whole new meal your family will love. 

This is my first time to take part in Cooked in Translation and our host for this month is the lovely Soni Sinha (which means she gets to choose the international dish we will interpret) from Soni’s Food for Thought.  She has chosen fishcakes!  But you probably guessed that from my title.  My mind went immediately to the bolinhos de bacalau or cod balls  (Doesn’t it sound better in Portguese?  Most things do.) we loved when we lived in Brazil.  Salted cod is soaked until it is tender again, then flaked and mixed with mashed potatoes and seasonings.  Little balls of this mixture are deep-fried to a golden crust.  I am not a fan of deep-frying, at least at home, so I decided to make the mixture, form it into patties and pan-fry, adding the typical Brazilian molho or sauce to finish.  Fishcakes are a wonderful use of leftover fish so, instead of salted cod, I used grilled Grouper, but you could use any flakey fish.  Gotta say, these got good reviews at home and I would make this again! 

Ingredients

For the fishcakes:

About 2 cups or 225g cooked fish, deboned

7 oz or 200g potatoes

1 small onion

1 clove garlic

2 fresh chilies

Small bunch cilantro or coriander leaves

Sea salt

Black pepper

1 egg

For the molho:

1 medium tomato

1 small green bell pepper

1 small onion

1 medium lime (or two tablespoons juice)

1/8 – 1/4 cup or 30-60ml Olive oil

Sea salt

Black pepper

Method

Using a couple of forks, pull your fish into small pieces.  This particular Grouper was a big guy and needed a knife to cut him up.  It was the weirdest thing because he was definitely not overcooked but even his skin was tough.  His flavor, though, was outstanding.

Peel and cube your potatoes and put them to boil in lightly salted water.

Finely minced your onions, fresh chilies and garlic cloves.

Rinse the cilantro and remove any thick and woody stems. Gather it up in a small ball.  Finely mince it as well, soft stems and all.

Meanwhile, your potatoes are probably cooked.  Make sure a fork goes into the cubes very easily.  Yes?  Okay, then drain out the water and mash the potatoes until very smooth.  Set aside to cool for a few minutes.  I removed mine from the hot pot after mashing so that they would cool faster.

Mix together the fish and vegetables, including the cooled potatoes, and add a light sprinkle of salt and a couple of good grinds of black pepper.   Stir well.

Add in your one egg and mix thoroughly.

Divide the mixture evenly into four patties.

Dampen your hands and use them to form patties with the mixture.  Rest them on a plate covered with cling film.  The cling film helps them not stick to the plate and also gives you a way to get under them without mashing the beautiful patty when removing to fry.

Cover the patties with cling film and chill for 30 minutes (or until you are ready to eat.)

To make the molho, cut your tomato in half and remove the seeds.  Do the same with your bell pepper.  Cut them both into small pieces.

 Peel and dice the onion.

Mix all three together and add a good sprinkle of sea salt and a generous few grinds of fresh black pepper.

Squeeze your lime into the bowl – or if your lime has a lot of seeds, into another bowl so you can remove the seeds before adding.

Drizzle in olive oil and stir, tasting occasionally to see if more is needed.   Set aside.

When you are ready to eat, drizzle a little olive oil into a non-stick pan and gently place the fish cakes in the oil.  Cook over a medium heat and put on a lid so that the insides of the patties will warm as well.

Allow to brown on the first side before trying to turn them over.

Turn a couple of times until both sides are nicely browned and the patties are heated through.

Serve topped with a couple of spoonsful of the molho.

If you want to go completely Brazilian, the full meal could include black beans, rice and farofa, which is manioc flour, toasted with butter and seasoned with garlic.   It can sometimes be found online or in Latin American shops.  Or if you are in Cairo, in my freezer.

Enjoy!

And to take the Cooked in Translation one step farther, the next day,  I made a sandwich, spreading homemade hummus and fresh habanero pepper sauce inside half of a pita bread and filling it with crumbled fishcake topped with molho, adding a little Middle Eastern flair to the spicy Brazilian fish.  Good food has no borders!  (And isn't that the point?)

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Crispy Roasted Fishcakes Wrapped in Bacon

Whenever we move houses, there are two books that come with me, in the suitcase, because I wouldn’t trust them to the shipment and I might need them right away.  This was especially true before the days of internet.  (And often the first weeks in a new home are like the days before internet.  We were fortunate here to have internet within a couple of days of moving in.  That doesn’t happen very often, believe me!)  My two essential books are the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook, 1980 edition and my own binder full of personal, many irreplaceable, family recipes, collected over the last 30-something years.

This move, a couple of extra books joined that treasured literary pantheon:  Fried Chicken and Champagne and Jamie’s Great Britain, because they were much salivated over Christmas gifts and I couldn’t bear to put them in the shipment and not see them again for six weeks.  They have both been well-thumbed this last week and a half and now are duly bookmarked with sticky tabs. 

So many recipes I want to try!

Here, then, is the first attempt from my two wonderful gift books, a recipe adapted from Jamie.

Ingredients

100g or 3.5 oz smoked salmon

60g or 2 oz smoked herring fillets

(or 160g or 5.5 oz smoked fish of your choice – Jamie recommends just salmon or salmon and trout.  The herring fillets were a bit strong so I will probably try this again with just salmon.)

2 green onions (or more if yours are skinny)

Knob of butter 

Sea salt

Black pepper

340g or 12 oz potatoes

2 large eggs

1 small lemon

Handful celery leaves or flat leafed parsley

Handful plain flour

2 oz or 60g of breadcrumbs or 4 slices dry sandwich bread

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Olive oil

4 slices of bacon

Method

Cut the root end off of the green onions and slice them finely.  Sauté with a knob of butter, a drizzle of olive oil to stop the butter from burning and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

Peel the potatoes and cut them in cubes.  Boil them in salted water until tender and mash-able.

Meanwhile, chop the smoked fish with a big knife.  Sure, you can do it with a small knife but it is not as satisfying as rocking a big knife under two hands. 

When the potatoes are cooked, drain them and mash them and leave them to cool a bit.

Chop your celery leaves or parsley.

Put your breadcrumbs (or four slices of sandwich bread) into the food processor with 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper.   Drizzle in a little olive oil while the thing is whizzing around until you have rough, ever so slightly moist breadcrumbs.

Break one egg into a shallow bowl.  Break the other egg and let the white fall into the same bowl.   Add the yolk to the cooled potato and mix thoroughly.

To the potatoes, add the fish, the green onions, the zest of your lemon, juice of half of your lemon and the celery or parsley.  Mix thoroughly.

Now divide your potato/fish mixture into four equal balls and shape them into patties.  Whisk your egg.

Now for my favorite part.  When I can add bacon to a recipe, I’m happy.  Spread a piece of cling film on your cabinet.  Add your bacon slices and top with another piece of cling film.  Using a rolling pin or wine bottle, roll your bacon to stretch it into longer pieces.   This really works!

Using your hands, lightly flour the patties and then put them into the egg.  Both sides.  This is going to get messy so don’t even try to keep clean.

Next pop them into the breadcrumbs and coat both sides well.  Return the patties to plate.

After all four are coated in breadcrumbs, wrap each one with a slice of bacon and secure with as many toothpicks as it takes.

Put them in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook them.

To cook:  preheat the oven to 425°F or 220°C.  Put the baking pan in to heat up.   When the oven reaches temperature, drizzle the pan with olive oil then put the fishcakes in the pan and drizzle a little more olive oil on their tops and bake for about 15 minutes. 

Remove from the oven and turn the patties over.  Cook for five or 10 more minutes or until they are crispy and browned all over.  

Serve with wedges of lemon.

Enjoy!

Addendum:  I am adding this post to the #Cooked in Translation blog hop, so just a little information about that. The concept is simple:  Once a month on the third Wednesday we interpret a classic international dish through the lens of our own or another culinary tradition.  See who else has taken the challenge and add your own fishcake link below.  You can find the rules here.