Spicy Salmon Fishcakes / Halloumi & Toasted Cashews With Paleo Pad Thai ‘Slaw’

East meets West in this Primal/Paleo culinary take on fishcakes and coleslaw. Without the potato, flour and breadcrumbs used in traditional fishcake recipes, these Asian inspired, fishcakes are so much simpler and quicker to make. 

Fresh and light - with no mayo or endless amounts of shredded cabbage to chomp your way through - the Pad Thai ‘Slaw’ is also a wonderful thing!

Put the two together for a surprisingly satisfying, clean-eating, Omega-3 packed family meal that’s high in protein and low in carbs.

Vegetarians can also make a meal of this punchy-flavoured Paleo Pad Thai ‘Slaw’ by topping it with 60g toasted cashew nuts and replacing the salmon fishcakes with slices of freshly griddled ‘vegetarian-friendly’ - i.e. not made with animal rennet - halloumi cheese - you’ll need to allow about 80g-100g of halloumi per person.

Tasty, pure and simple…job done! 

Spicy Salmon Fishcakes With Paleo Pad Thai ‘Slaw’ (Serves 4)

Ingredients - for the fishcakes

800 g wild Alaskan salmon, boned and skinned

3 spring onions, finely chopped

juice of 1 lime

1 tsp organic dried chilli flakes

1 tbsp tamari

1 dsp fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated (approx. 1 x 2.5 cm / 1inch piece)

4 tbsp finely chopped coriander leaves

1 organic egg, beaten 

1 tsp sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

75-100 g organic ground almonds

1-2 tbsp organic coconut oil - for frying the fishcakes

Ingredients - for the Paleo Pad Thai ‘Slaw’ 

2 medium courgettes, cut into thin slices, coarsely grated or spiralised (see Notes below)

3 medium carrots, cut into thin slices, coarsely grated or spiralised (see Notes below)

200g frozen baby broad beans, thawed and shelled (about 120g prepared weight)

1 tbsp chopped fresh chives

1 tbsp raw organic sesame seeds

Ingredients - for the dressing

40 ml fresh lime juice

40 g raw organic cashew nut butter

1 tbsp tamari (I used Clearspring)

40 ml Co Yo natural coconut milk yogurt

1-2 drops organic liquid stevia

Ingredients - to serve

1 tsp raw sesame seeds

coriander leaves and/or micro leaves

Instructions - to make the fishcakes

Put all the fishcake ingredients, except the ground almonds, into a food processor and pulse together until well blended. N.B. Be careful not to over-process - you want the mixture to retain a little of its chunky texture rather than turn into a mushy fish paste! 

Tip the fishcake mixture into a large bowl and add just enough of the ground almonds to ensure that it will hold together sufficiently well to form into fishcakes. The final mixture may still feel a little wet but should be easy enough to shape in your hands and will firm up in the refrigerator prior to cooking.

Divide into 8 fishcakes about 2.5 cm / 1 inch thick (weighing approximately 125g each). Transfer to a large plate, cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Heat the coconut oil in a large, non-stick frying pan over a medium/high heat until the surface of the oil starts to shimmer (don’t allow it to smoke!). Cook the fishcakes for 3 minutes until crisp and golden on the underside, then flip them over and cook on the other side for another 3 minutes.

Serve with Pad Thai ‘Slaw’ and a squeeze of fresh lime juice.

Instructions - for the Paleo Pad Thai ‘Slaw’

Using a small hand whisk, combine all dressing ingredients together in a small bowl or cup until you have a smooth dressing that’s of pouring consistency.

To quickly defrost and remove the broad beans from their pods. Weigh out the frozen broad beans into a heatproof bowl or jug. Bring a kettle of water to the boil and pour over the beans. Let stand for 3-5 minutes. When the water has cooled down pop the tender, bright green beans out of their thick, leathery skins by squeezing gently between two fingers. 

In a large bowl, combine courgette, carrots and shelled broad beans. Add the chopped chives and sesame seeds, mix together gently and set aside.

Just before serving, pour over the dressing and gently toss all the ingredients together until the vegetables are evenly coated.

Transfer to plates and top with a sprinkling of sesame seeds, chopped coriander and/or micro leaves. 

Serve with either Spicy Salmon Fishcakes or Fried Halloumi and Toasted Cashews (see below).

The vegetarian option: Fried Halloumi and Toasted Cashews

Instructions to make Fried Halloumi & Toasted Cashews With Paleo Pad Thai 'Slaw' (V)

Firstly, toast the cashews in a large frying pan over a medium heat for about 5 minutes or until turning pale gold, then take off the heat and set aside. 

Cut the halloumi into 1 cm thick slices. Heat some coconut oil or olive oil in a pan until hot, then fry the halloumi for just 1-2 minutes on each side until golden and crispy around the edges. 

Arrange the Paleo Pad Thai ‘Slaw’ on 4 serving plates, top with the toasted cashews, sesame seeds and coriander leaves, then serve the fried cheese slices (3-4 per person) alongside, with wedges of fresh lime for squeezing over.

N.B. Be sure to plate-up the fried halloumi immediately after it’s cooked - it’s so much nicer warm! If you allow cooked halloumi to go cold, it will tend to become too hard and rubbery.

Notes

To make carrot and courgette julienne for the Paleo Pad Thai ‘Slaw’, I first cut the washed courgettes and peeled carrots in half horizontally, then finely sliced the halved vegetables vertically (on a mandolin) before using a small sharp knife to cut them into 6 cm long thin julienne strips. Coarsely grating them in a food processor would be a lot quicker!

The Paleo Pad Thai ‘Slaw’ is suitable for vegans.

Carbohydrate 17g Protein 66g - per serving (assuming 2 fishcakes per person)

Thai Green Curry With Prawns & Thai Green Garden Curry

Ever since I walked into the Royal Thai restaurant in Nottingham 20 years ago, I have been enchanted by Thai cuisine. Not so much the ‘farang' (Thai for Western foreigners of white descent!) version of Thai food, with our predilection for all things deep-fried - a sort of spring rolls with everything attitude - but the fresh and light, hot and spicy flavours brought together in a variety of harmonious dishes that seem to make every Thai meal a banquet.

Without dairy and hardly any emphasis on meat, Thai cooking is the embodiment of all the main flavour components - sweet, sour, spicy, salty and bitter - perfectly balanced in playful, imaginative dishes that are full of colour and texture. I’ll never forget the sheer joy and excitement of one gorgeous Thai girl called Tinkerbell (how endearing a nick-name is that?) as she ran out from the restaurant’s kitchen to proudly show us her first representation of a beautiful bird she’d painstakingly carved out of a carrot! 

Our first visit to the Royal Thai was an attempt to educate ourselves in anticipation of a month long business trip to Bangkok. At first they must have smiled at our naivety, but, prior to the journey we were generously afforded numerous ‘insider’ traveller’s tips and we quickly became one of their more regular customers…hungry for their companionship as much as the food! Subsequently, the amazingly beautiful, gracious and intelligent Thai girls running the business at that time welcomed us with open arms into the Thai community, and for many years it was as if we were part of their family. Sadly, the girl I most fell in love with died in a road traffic accident shortly after opening a second restaurant in Nottingham (formerly known as Siam Thani). Nang was the dearest of friends to me and the absolute epitome of all that I now associate with Thai people generally - kind, generous and incredibly friendly.

Now that we’re low-carb and Primal, it’s not so easy to eat out in Thai restaurants - you really do need lots of steamed rice to quieten down the chilli-heat - but for the home cook, authentic-tasting Thai food is simple and fast to prepare, and because you’re in control it doesn’t have to be the hottest of the hot. 

Prawns are synonymous with Thai cookery, but their popularity comes at a price. A violent, Asian slave trade exists to produce most of the prawns for sale in Western supermarkets, so please be careful that the prawns you buy are ethically and responsibly sourced. Choose organic king prawns from Waitrose or Honduran raw prawns from M&S. Thank you. Or you could forego the prawns altogether by opting for our vegan-friendly, equally flavoursome, Thai Green Garden Curry.

I’ve paired Primal Plate's tasty, just nicely spicy, warming green curry with pak-choi but Cauliflower Rice is good too. Vegans and vegetarians can simply substitute cherry tomatoes and asparagus tips for the prawns. Hand-carved vegetable flowers and birds are optional!

With food as delectable as this, no wonder Thailand is known as the “land of smiles”.

Thai Green Curry With Prawns (Serves 4) 

1 tbsp organic coconut oil

2 medium organic sweet red peppers, cored, de-seeded and cut into thin strips

4 medium/large organic spring onions, sliced diagonally into 5 or 6 pieces  

2 x 400ml tins organic coconut milk (full fat)

1 tbsp Marigold organic Swiss vegetable bouillon powder

4 tsp Thai green curry paste

1 tbsp organic tamari

450g raw peeled organic king prawns

200g frozen petits pois, defrosted  

½ tsp sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

20-30ml freshly-squeezed lime juice

2-3 drops organic liquid stevia

20g fresh coriander leaves, chopped

Thai Green Garden Curry

Simply follow the instructions given below - omitting the prawns and substituting with:

300g organic cherry tomatoes, halved

300g asparagus tips, trimmed and cut in to 5cm (2”) pieces

To Serve

2 x 235g packs pak choi, washed, prepared (*see below) and lightly steamed for 3 minutes. 

*If using very young pak choi they can be left whole or cut into halves or quarters. However, larger stems of pak choi will cook more evenly and are much easier to manage on the plate if you cut the leafy tops off their white stems. If the outer stems and leaves are still too large, split them in half down the middle. Place the white stems into the bottom of the steamer, then pile the green leaves on top and steam for 3 minutes with the pan lid on.

Instructions

Fill and boil a kettle of water. Pre-heat 4 large serving dishes/bowls. 

For making the Thai Green Garden Curry: Pour some of the boiling water from the kettle in to a medium saucepan. Bring back to the boil, throw in the asparagus and cook for just 2 minutes (do not overcook them, they should still have some ‘bite’). Drain and refresh the blanched asparagus in cold water (or place under a cold running tap) to stop the cooking process and set their bright green colour. Drain again and set aside.

To quickly defrost the petits pois: Put the peas in a heatproof jug, pour over the boiling water then drain and set aside.

Melt the coconut oil over a medium/high heat in a large, deep sauté pan. Add the pepper strips and spring onions to the pan and stir-fry for about 2 minutes or until just beginning to soften. 

Add the bouillon powder and the green curry paste and continue to stir-fry for a further 30 seconds - try to avoid breathing in the fumes at this stage, they’re quite pungent!

Pour the coconut milk into the pan and bring the mixture to the boil whilst stirring constantly. Once it comes to the boil turn the heat down to medium, then add the tamari, half the lime juice and a single drop of liquid stevia. Taste. Add a pinch of sea salt and a good grinding of black pepper - plus an extra drop of stevia, if you think it needs it. 

Let the sauce gently bubble away over a medium heat for 5 minutes to allow it to reduce down slightly.

Meanwhile fill a steamer with the rest of the boiling water from the kettle. Place the pak choi in the top of the steamer and cook with the pan lid on for 3 minutes.

Whilst the pak choi is cooking, tip the prawns (or, if making Thai Green Garden Curry, the cherry tomatoes and blanched asparagus tips) and the petits pois into the curry sauce and cook for a further 2 minutes or until the prawns turn pink and are completely opaque - or if making the Thai Green Garden Curry, just until the tomatoes, asparagus and peas are warmed through. 

Take the pan off the heat and stir in half the chopped coriander. Check the seasoning again and adjust to taste - also add a little more lime juice and/or another drop of stevia, if needed.

Pile the cooked and drained pak choi in the centre of the four pre-warmed serving bowls. Carefully ladle the green curry over the top dividing the prawns and vegetables equally between each bowl.

Sprinkle over the rest of the coriander and serve immediately. 

Notes

N.B. To keep the Thai green curry fresh and vibrant you need to be careful not to over-boil it in the final two minutes of cooking time. Gently heat through until just below boiling point. If you over-cook it at this stage, you’ll end up with tough prawns, collapsed tomatoes and dirty-looking, more-khaki-than-green, vegetables. Not very nice!

Carbohydrate 21g Protein 25g - per serving (with prawns)

Carbohydrate 26g Protein 10g - per serving (with cherry tomatoes & asparagus)

Thai Spiced Aubergine Curry with Cauliflower Rice

I met one of my oldest friends last week. We go back nearly thirty years, I think. I don’t see her that often, but when I do, it’s as if it’s just a continuum of the time before - even if our last meeting was months, or even years, ago. I love this woman’s courage, directness and no-nonsense attitude to life. Turns out, we’ve both lost a significant amount of weight recently, so obviously our respective weight-reduction diet plans were up for discussion and comparison. Her low-fat / low-calorie / high-nutrient Slimmer’s World diet (by which method she has lost four stone!) is almost the exact opposite of my high-fat / low-carbohydrate / Primal diet that doesn’t give a hoot about counting calories (though it’s still nutrient dense).

It’s a sure-fire thing that Primal Plate has nothing to offer my friend in terms of optimising a weight-loss maintenance plan because she’s doing brilliantly already, thank you very much! What I do know is that you cannot combine Primal eating (no-grains, low-carbohydrate) with a low-fat diet because you’d find yourself in a dietary hell of restricted food choices and no energy. And vice versa. The natural consequence of a high fat, high carbohydrate diet and a sedentary lifestyle is an increasingly fat and unhealthy body. In this context, today’s obesity and type-2 diabetes epidemic is the norm.  

It appears dietary guidelines for weight loss are still polarised between low-fat / high-carbohydrate (including grains, potatoes and wholemeal bread) and high-fat / low-carbohydrate (your source of energy comes from healthy dietary fat like cheese, grass-fed meat, butter and cream). So, the message is, unless you do insane amounts of exercise, you really can’t combine both diets and stay at your optimum weight! Whatever you’ve been conditioned to believe, there is mounting scientific evidence that proves fat, particularly saturated fat (butter, cheese, meat and cream), isn’t the enemy. In fact, it may be high carbohydrates that are more dangerous. Hence, Primal Plate recipes answer the need for comfort food that could be mistaken for carbohydrate-rich meals.

Whilst putting the world to rights, as only sixty-something sagacious women can, I mentioned my inclination towards vegetarian food and my friend went on to tell me how tricky she found cooking for her son and girlfriend, who are both vegan. It was then a light went on inside my head. To make Primal Plate blog more relevant to her, why not develop a low-carbohydrate, Primal (no grains, no pulses, no legumes) easy-to-cook vegan recipe? And with that thought, Thai Spiced Aubergine Curry with Cauliflower Rice was created.

The first time I made this dish, the result was such a pleasant surprise! The aubergine transforms itself into a sort of ‘vegetarian meat’ that absorbs the curry spices and fresh lime juice well, and perfectly blends with creamy coconut milk into an amalgam of sweet-sour, meltingly soft, spicy curry perfection. 

The trick to cooking aubergine is to cook it thoroughly - in this instance, first cutting it into smallish pieces and frying in coconut oil until it’s evenly brown on all sides, then lightly braising in the sauce until it’s unctuously soft and velvety. Low-carbohydrate, grain-free, cauliflower ‘rice’ does a brilliant job of soaking up all the delectable juices and voilà - a healthy, flavoursome vegan meal that is seriously yum!   

You’ll need a food processor to make the Cauliflower Rice.

Thai Spiced Aubergine Curry with Cauliflower Rice (Serves 4)

Ingredients - for the aubergine curry

3 medium aubergines (about 750g (1lb 10oz) total weight)

3 tbsp organic coconut oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

2.5cm (1in) piece root ginger, finely chopped

4 tsp red Thai curry paste (I use Barts)

1 tbsp raw organic coconut sugar

1 lime, juiced

1 tbsp tamari

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

300ml (10½ fl oz) cold water

2 x 400g (14oz) cans full-fat coconut milk

15g (½oz) basil leaves, finely shredded

60g (2oz) raw cashews

1tsp olive oil

Instructions 

Heat 1 teaspoon of olive oil in a small frying pan and slowly toast the cashews over a low heat until they are golden. Allow them to cool on a plate lined with kitchen paper. When cool, use a sharp knife to chop them into smallish pieces. Set aside.

Meanwhile, clean the aubergines with a damp kitchen towel, cut off the stalk end then cut the flesh into small (2cm) cubes.

Heat the coconut oil in a large frying pan over a medium-high heat then add the chopped onion and ginger and cook for 2-3 minutes until softened. 

Add the aubergine cubes and fry, turning over from time to time, until everything is a deep golden brown on all sides. This takes about 10 minutes so keep your eye on it to make sure the mixture browns evenly and doesn’t burn.

Add the curry paste to the pan and cook for a further minute. Then add the coconut sugar, the lime juice, the tamari, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and the cold water. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to gentle simmer and continue to cook for 15 minutes or until the liquid has reduced to about a third of its original volume. 

Stir in the coconut milk and continue to cook gently for another 5 minutes.

Taste to check the seasoning, then serve with shredded basil and toasted cashews scattered over and steamed Cauliflower Rice.

Cauliflower Rice (V) (Serves 4)

Ingredients

1 large head of cauliflower, preferably organic

1-2 fresh bay leaf (optional)

Instructions

Boil a kettle of water.

Wash and dry a large head of cauliflower. Cut off the florets only (you don’t need the stem). Blitz the florets in a food processor for about 30 seconds until it comes together into a powdery cauliflower ‘snow’. 

Tip the cauliflower into the top of a steamer and tuck a couple of bay leaves into the cauliflower, if you have them. Pour the boiling water from the kettle into the bottom of the steamer, cover and steam for 3-4 minutes (do not cook any longer than this - the ‘grains’ of cauliflower should stay separate, not reduce to wet mush!)

Drain well and serve immediately with Thai Spiced Aubergine Curry

Notes:

There’s no need to salt the aubergines for this recipe, or indeed for any recipe calling for aubergine now that the bitterness has been bred out of modern varieties. When it comes to Mellanzane Parmigiana I still do, mainly out of force of habit, which just harks back to the time when I used to fry the aubergine slices in olive oil prior to assembling the dish and, unless they were pre-salted, the amount of olive oil they absorbed was alarming!

Carbohydrate 28g Protein 13g - per serving of aubergine curry with cauliflower rice