Thai fish cakes with dipping sauce and herb salad

We have been quite into fish at the moment and have loved oven baking them in parcels which I have posted before. I had similar ingredients, but wanted to try something different. This would probably be rightup there in my TOP MEALS that I have made / eaten before. Per usual, I made it up as I went and don't really have a recipe, so I will try to put down how I made it here. Can't wait to have left overs for lunch - DEEEEELICIOUS! For something with alot of ingredients, it was very quick and easy and cheap for us because a lot of these ingredients I have already.

Fish Cakes:
In the food processor b;end the following ingredients.
- About 1/2 kg of white fish fillets chopped up (I used 3 of my frozen hoki fillets I get from aldi).
- 1 egg
- 3 dessert spoonfuls of corn flour
- a bunch of corriander leaves (maybe about 1/2 cup)
- a small bunch of mint (about 1/4 cup) - a splash of fish sauce (about 1 TBS)
- a splash of sweet chilli sauce (about 2-3 TBS)
- a splash of soy sauce (about 2 TBS)
- 2 cloves of garlic
- a handful of roasted peanuts
- 1 fresh chilli (omit if you don't like spice)
- 1/2 tsp of fresh ginger (or dried if you don't have it)
- 1 tsp of yellow curry paste
- 2 shallots
- a squeeze of lemon and lime (and some rind too if you want)
- a little salt and pepper
- about 1/4 cup bread crumbs to bind (you may need less or more depending on your mixture)

Once blended, spoon out with a dessert spoon into little patties. My mixture at this point was still a little sloppy and sticky. I was making it ahead of time, so I sprinkled a plate with bread crumbs and dollopped the mixture into little piles. Then I sprinkled more bread crumbs on top and put in the fridge for about 8-10 hours. By the time I went to cook them, they were firm and easy to roll and cook. You could make these ahead of time like I did or even freeze them for a quick meal on a busy night.

In batches, then shallow fried them in oil and placed in the oven to keep warm and make sure they were cooked through. They didn't take long either :)


Dipping Sauce
In a bowl I just added some soy sauce as a base. Then I added a tiny bit of soy sauce and olive oil (about a tsp). Then I chopped up some more shallots, chilli, corriander, ginger, sweet chilli sauce and a squeeze of lime juice and mix gently.


Spicy and Crunchy Herb Salad
I chopped up some corriander, shallots, mint. Sprinkle with some frech chilly and smashed roasted peanuts. Serve with lime wedges.


Serving
What I love so much about Asian food is apart from the fact taht so much of it is healthy, the experience of eating it is always fun!. Arrange the three elements above on a platter. Then you take a chucnk of the fish cakes, dip it in the sauce and top with some salad.


I hope you enjoy this like we did. DEFINITLEY having this again. Don't be put off by all the ingredients, it's worth it!
Enjoy;
Lauren x

A gift so tasty - I wanted to keep it!

Well, what to make my mother-in-law who has a real sweet tooth??? TRUFFLES!
I used this recipe from taste (predictable I know). Only problem was that the instructions were good if your Air Con is set to a European Winter. However, for this Aussie chick that has no air con and attempted rolling truffles on a rather hot spring day - learned a few lessons :)

Instead of leaving mix at room temp for 1-1.5 hrs, I left it overnight in the fridge. Even then it was still a little soft. So I scooped out 'balls' onto a plate and then refridgerated for another 30-45 mins untill wuite firm. This allowed me to handle much easier when rolling. Some I rolled in coconut and cocoa and the others I dipped in melted white and milk chocolate (I would have done dark for me though - yum!).

Then once they were rolled I replaced them into the fridge again for a while to firm up before boxing into mini patty pans or squares of tissue paper/ waxed paper.

This makes a delicious gift - IF there is any left aty the end ;)

Enjoy;
Lauren x

Spring Lovliness :)

I found a new blog - there are SOOO many wonderful ideas out there in cyberspace. Here is "Celebrate Yellow Made" (found via my fav Jack and Izzy)and there are some really cool tutorials I have added to my to-do list, these would make wonderful craft night activities (speaking of which I need to organise the next one - hmmm.....slightly sidetracked lol).

I haven't blogged about crafty projects for a little while (but have been doing plenty of projects behind the scenes). So, since we are launching into spring, lets celebrate with spring flower craftiness. SO GORGEOUS!

Check out these:

No sew flowers

Paper flower decorations

Aren't they darling! For full totorials and more photos of the projects - click on the links :)

Lauren x

Bed Time Round-Up

Any Mum with little kids running around the house knows about that certain time of the evening. For me it is about 6:30 when the baby is in bed, dinner is made, my 4 year old is ready for teeth/toilet/story bedtime routine.
You are met with landmines of socks, lego, dummies, matchbox cars, crayons and dolls shoes sprawled across the place. There is NO evidence of the vacumming, tidying and cleaning you did earlier throughout the day. Mum is EXHAUSTED and ready to 'clock off' (not that that ever happens -lol)!
Well I have invented a game in our house that has taken some of the pressure off this crazy time of night. 'Bed Time Round-Up' is when I put 1-2 minutes on the clock (depending on the amount of landmines) and we then race the clock with a toy shopping trolley, rounding up all of our own belongings and putting them into the trolley. This limits the 'extra' picking up I have to do at the end of the night and also helps foster the mentality in the kids that they pick up their own belongings.
I almost forgot to do the round up tonight, but it was requested - can you believe that!?!?!?


I would love to hear from you if you impliment this or have something similar :)

Lauren x

Encouraging a second language in young children - our little journey :)

Our 4 year old son has picked up some basic Mandarin at his preschool. He has shown so far to have quite the memory, and considering the school he will go to learns mandarin, we have started investigating teaching this to him.

We have completed a trial lesson at Mandarin stars and josh loved it. Due to a clash of days with preschool, he ended up doing his free trial with the 5-7 age group kids and fit in well. It was something new for him and as they speak mandarin 90% of the time, a bit of a shock. But their approach of using craft, lots of visiuals and immersion was wonderful to watch.

The team at Mandarin Stars offer a wide variety of resources online to help you support the family in learning this together, which was one of the main reasons why this school stood out to us.

So we have done some research of our own in addition to recomendations from Mandarin Stars and have found some wonderful tools to help him (and us) learn this foreign language.

Iphone apps:
- 'Kid Lingo Pre-school Mandarin' which is wonderful. It's basically digital flash cards with pronunciation of english and the mandarin with a picture too.
- Baby Talks
- Feed Me!
- Chinese for kids

Aps that have helped us learn too:
- uTalk HD Chinese (Mandarin) --- [iPad ap]
- Mandarin study buddy
- Pinyin Trainer
- Chinese Talkpad


This is going to be an interesting journey for us as a family, and it will be interesting what will happen as the kids grow. Definitley thinking another trip to Singapore will be around the corner and then we can practice more of our Mandarin in context (yes that is the reason I want to go back :).

Lauren x