Thai Fish cakes and Chicken Tagine

This week the group wanted to make something that would warm everyone up on such a miserable day. We thought about what ingredients and recipes we could use to achieve this.

The group decided on some spicy Thai fish cakes to start and a warming Moroccan chicken tagine as a main.

Thai Fish Cakes:

To make these you will need white fish fillets, fish sauce, Thai red curry paste, fresh coriander, spring onions, 1 egg, dried chilli flakes, lime (juice and zest), flour for dusting and oil for frying.

First the group had to chop the coriander, spring onions and fish very finely. 

Cutting up the fish.

We then mixed all the ingredients together in a bowl.

We then shaped the mixture into small fish cakes and dusted with flour, this was a very messy job!

We then shallow fried them.

We then served with a sweet chilli dipping sauce:

Moroccan Chicken Tagine.

For this you will need skinless chicken thighs, onion, garlic, ras el hanout, cinnamon stick, ground ginger, runny honey, tinned chopped tomatoes, green pitted olive and harissa paste.

First we heated a little oil in a pan and fried the chicken to seal in the flavour and moisture, we then added the onions and garlic. Once the onion and garlic and softened we added the rest of the ingredients and let the tagine simmer for 40 minutes.

Once this was cooked we served with cous cous seasoned with spring onions, coriander and lemon juice.

Everyone enjoyed the tagine and said it was especially warming and perfect for a winters day. 

We all had a really good time working together to create these lovely dishes. 

Celebrating Chinese New Year

Today we are celebrating Chinese New Year with some healthy Asian Cuisine.

To start the group members found a recipe for 5 spice turkey and lettuce wraps. 

The group wanted to try these out as they are low in fat but included lots of spices to boost the flavour.

To make these you will need Turkey mince, fresh ginger, red bell peppers, water chestnuts, Hoisin sauce, chinese 5 spice, spring onion, carrot and lettuce.

Firstly fry off the turkey mince and the grated fresh ginger in a little sesame oil.

Add the 5 spice and hoisin sauce, then add the vegetables and mix for a couple of minutes. You want the vegetable to still be crunchy.

Then put a couple of table spoons of the turkey mixture into a lettuce leaf and serve..

Everyone agreed that it was a very tasty starter!

Vegetable Stir Fry

The group also wanted to cook a vegetable stir fry.

The group wanted to pick the vegetables when they went out shopping based on what looked the best.

So we got:

Carrot

Spring onions 

Red, green and yellow peppers

Chilli

mushrooms

pak-choi

sweetcorn 

Mange tout
Onions

The group had to wash and slice up all these vegetables, a great opportunity to work on our knife skills. The group know that it is very important to use sharp knives safely and its always great to get some practice in.

We then fried all the vegetables in a little bit of sesame seed oil and added soy sauce and Chinese 5 Spice.

We served the vegetable stir fry with some white rice.

The group said that they enjoyed all the flavours of this dish and felt good that they had made vegetables taste so exciting!

We spoke about how these vegetables give us the nutrition, vitamins and energy we need to be healthy and happy.