eatplantz

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 100C / 210F fan (120C conventional / gas 1).
2. Prepare the jackfruit. Start by straining the canned jackfruit. Then into a large bowl, seperate the soft, fibrous parts from the seeds and the harder cores. Place the seeds and cores back in the strainer so you’re left with a bowl of the meaty-looking bits and a strainer of the not-so-meaty-looking bits. Either finely chop the seeds and cores or place them in a food processor for 10 – 15 seconds or until there are no large bits. Add these to the large bowl of meaty-looking bits!
3. Grate the tofu into the bowl of jackfruit, using the larger holes on the grater.
4. Add the vegan fish sauce to the tofu and jackfruit and mix well.
5. On a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, spread out the tofu and jackfruit mixture evenly over the tray. Bake for 1 hour then, using a spatula, turn the jackfruit and tofu over and bake for another 1/2 hour. This step removes excess water from the mixture without changing the colour too much to resemble fish as closely as possible in texture and appearance.
6. Whilst waiting for the “fish” to bake, boil the potatoes in salted water. Boil them the same way you would if you were making mashed potato (they should be soft / if you put a knife into one it will just slide off).
7. Whilst waiting for the potatoes AND the “fish”, prepare the rest of the ingredients. Finely slice spring onions and kaffir lime leaves, roughly the chop herbs, deseed the chillies, juice the limes etc.
8. Prepare the batter by adding the flour, corn flour, baking powder, salt, water and lime juice together. Whisk until smooth.
9. Once the potatoes are cooked, strain them and leave to cool for 15 minutes then mash them until there are no lumps. Then add the kaffir lime leaves, Thai basil, chillies, ginger, garlic, lime juice, vegan fish sauce, coriander leaves, spring onions, salt and ground cumin and mix well.
10. Once the tofu and jackfruit are ready, add this to the potato mixture and mix well.
11. Shape the “fish” cakes. Divide the mixture into 10 equal portions. Mine were about 120g each. Shape the fish cakes into round cylinder shapes approximately 1 inch tall.
12. In a large frying pan, begin heating the cooking oil over medium/high heat. While waiting for the oil, set up for bread crumbing. Either left to right or right to left set up the fish cakes, then batter, then breadcrumbs then a plate to put the breadcrumbed fish cakes. Then one at a time place a fish cake into the batter so it is fully coated, then into the breadcrumbs until fully coated and then onto the plate. Do this until all the fish cakes are ready.
13. Test if the oil is hot. Add a little batter and if it bubbles, sizzles and floats straight away it’s ready, if not then wait a little longer and try again. If this is the first time making these, just start by cooking one fish cake so you know what to expect. Add the fish cakes to the pan and cook until the bottom half of the fish cake is golden brown then flip and repeat. Do this until all the fish cakes are cooked. NOTE: You may need to wait between batches for the oil to heat up again.

Serve with sweet chilli sauce and garnish with spring onions, sesame seeds and birds-eye chillies (if you feel adventurous)! Would go well with jasmine rice and stir fried veggies!