Crispy Fish Salad (THAI SPECIAL)

Crispy Fish Salad

Ingredients

Crispy Fish
• 250g flathead fillets
• 50g smoked trout
• 80ml fish sauce
• 400ml canola oil

Salad
• 10g coriander
• 10g mint
• 15g lemongrass
• 1 lime leaf, finely sliced
• segments of pomelo fruit

Dressing
• 1 long red chilli, seeded
• 2 - 3 coriander roots
• 10g peeled ginger
• 3 peeled garlic cloves
• 1 red scud chilli
• 150ml lime juice
• 30ml fish sauce
• 40g palm sugar

Method

1. Mix flathead fillets in a bowl with the fish sauce.
2. Place on drying racks on a tray.
3. Place in oven and dry out on 90°C for about two hours until dry but not crisp. Cool. (This can all be done the day before)
4. Blend the cool dry fish in a food processor with the smoked trout. (This should only be done just before you fry.) It should look like bread crumbs.
5. Heat the canola oil in a wok or heavy pan to 160°C to 180°C.
6. Rain in a small hand full of the fish crumbs.
7. Let it sizzle for 30 seconds then pull it together gently with two egg slices and lift out when it is a golden brown. Place on absorbent paper. Continue until all fish is used.

Dressing
1. Pound garlic, coriander root, ginger then the chillies to a paste. Add palm sugar and fish sauce, incorporate well.
2. Pour over the lime juice. Mix together well. Taste for seasoning - it should taste sweet, sour and salty.

Salad
1. Place fish on serving plate. Mix salad ingredients together. Lightly dress salad over the fish and serve.
2. Serve the rest of the dressing on the side.
3. Try not to moisten the crisp fish to much otherwise it will turn soggy quickly.

NOTE *Palm Sugar and Palm Oil are two very different products and it is the destruction of the Orang-utans natural habitat to produce Palm oil in some areas of the world which is a concern. It is a complex subject as palm oil is also produced in some areas without any affect on orang-utan's lives, however the issue here is that palm sugar, on the whole is a sustainable product.