[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

The fried fish cakes certainly are a very popular street food, and you can always find vendors day or night around the bus depots and train stations selling bags full of them. Would you please post the recipe you use for it?
...

Fish Cakes (tort man pla)

Ingreditients:

• 300g fish fillets (recommends whiting or orange roughy - not sure of equivalents)
• 4 tablespoons red curry paste (separate recipe)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon caster (superfine) sugar
• 5 kaffir lime leaves
• 2 tablespoons finely cut snake beans or green beans (we can generally only get green around here)
• oil for deep frying

Method:

1. Wash fish in cold, salted water
2. Combine fish, curry paste and egg in a food processor and blend well, seasoning with fish sauce and sugar (can be done via slightly different method with mortar and pestle - The Loved One uses his food processor)
3. In a large bowl gather the fish purée into a ball and throw back into the bowl
4. Continue this slapping until the mixture becomes firmer and sticker (this aerates the ingredients and makes the cakes puff when deep-fried)
5. Mix in lime leaves and beans
6. Mould into small disks, then deep-fry in a wok with plenty of oil over a medium heat
7. Serve immediately (they toughen as they cool) with, David recommends, cucumber relish (separate recipe)

It is from this recipe we'd like to seek a grilling/broiling recipe. We have made another grilled/broiled tuna-cakes recipe (non-SE Asian), and might look into making a hybrid.

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I'm up for trying most anything. I figure that I can probably adapt recipes and leave out some of the sweeter appearing ingredients. I seem to recall a small place back in Boulder that had curries that weren't particularly sweet. I'd love to replicate that! I'm up for pretty much any meats except organ meat, and some of the squishier fish, ie; squid, octopus, etc. and I have not seen eel in the market here.

I don't appear to have any on file, so I'll have to wait until Mum's up here again (don't worry, it's usually only about a month between visits). Then I'll sit her down and ask her about a few, and load them into my recipe software.

I can't handle pumpkin pie, either (although a good pumpkin bread can be yummy!) I usually keep some beets in the fridge that I chop up for a salad with walnuts, gorgonzola, ranch dressing, and a mix of lettuces. those are always fresh beets though that I bake, peel and slice. I'll have to think about it next time I have a burger. hold the egg though! eggs are yummy, but not on a burger! that's where chilies go!

We'd put eggs and chilies on. Anything goes.

Originally Posted by phenomshel

Pumpkin in the US seems to have the "expectations" of it being sweet and used in sweet things, like pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, cookies, ooey gooey bars... what do you use it for in Oz that you weren't expecting dessert, Marc?

If you think of definitions, "pumpkin" here includes a whole lot of different types of "pumpkins" (eg. "butternut pumpkin") that you might (according to Wikipedia) refer to as "winter squash".

None of it is (generally) associated with sweets here. Pumpkin bread is still a savoury bread here (for instance I've just been eating a pumpkin and pipita sourdough for the last few lunches, with cottage cheese, tomato and bread and butter cucumbers). We might make soup, especially in winter with some sourcream and some crusty bread. We'd particularly use it as one of the roast vegetables (eg. along with spuds and parsnips) alongside a roast meat like beef or lamb. Sometimes they're used on pizza (usually "fancy" ones ), or a grilled vegetable stack might include some in its ingredients.
Even when being made into pumpkin scones then, unlike normal scones, in my experience they're usually not served with strawberry jam and cream, but usually with just butter.

In Oz, generally, "dessert" is not a meal that comes to mind when talking about pumpkin. It'd be a toss-up between soup and a Sunday Roast taking that spot, and certainly "savoury" in broad terms.

Cheers,
Marc