Salmon rissoles

As Lent is upon us, we like to eat more fish or seafood dishes this season.   As a Filipino parent, we try to instill in our kids traditions that we grew up with.  And as born Filipino Catholics, there's a lot of these traditions that come during Lent - from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday to witness washing of the feet, to Good Friday to do the Stations of the Cross to Easter Sunday.   While we can't always do all these traditions because of timing and schedule, we do keep to our lenten sacrifice.

From Ash Wednesday, it's customary that we avoid eating meats on Fridays for the whole season of Lent.  In the past years, I have personally sacrificed eating meat for 40 days and it was a welcome change.   

Every year, each of the girls have their own fave food or habit which they sacrifice for the whole Lenten period.  Usually they give up chips, lollies, chocolates, soda, etc.  It's a good exercise of discipline as sometimes I forget and pack some in their lunch box, and then I get told off.  "Please don't add chips in my lunch box as I'm sacrificing that for lent, mum."  It's good for discipline and for the health too!

Now this is a fantastic option to our weekday or weekend menu.  Salmon rissoles.  They're easy and so inexpensive to make.  The recipe is adapted from Coles recipes.

Ingredients:

4 medium sized potatoes
 

30g unsalted butter

395g tin red salmon, drained and flaked

3-4 spring onions, chopped

1 cup breadcrumbs

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 egg

1 cup corn flour


vegetable oil or light olive oil for frying



Method

Boil the potatoes until tender, 20-25 minutes.

Drain.  In a large bowl, mash the potatoes with 30g unsalted butter.

Add the flaked tinned salmon, bread crumbs, spring onions, egg, zest and juice of the lemon.

Mix and shape into patties.

Roll in corn flour and shake off excess.

Continue wth the rest of the patties.

Heat a pan on medium heat with enough oil for frying.

Pan fry the rissoles in batches, for 5-6 minutes or until golden.

Drain on paper towels.

Serve with garlic aoili (simply add crushed garlic into a cup of store bought mayonnaise) and a lemon wedge.

Tips and tricks:

*Variations on this rissoles, would be using tinned tuna or flaked smoked salmon;

* When shaping the patties/rissoles, make sure they are uniform in size to make cooking easy

* You can add other greens into the rissoles.  Chopped basil or chives will work great too.

Peanut butter cookies with coconut oil (made with homemade peanut butter)

Peanut butter cookies is one of the two things I remember we baked at home, while growing up.  We were not a baking family.  We were more grilling and stove top people.  The other thing we baked at home were pound cakes.  Yes!  And I remember we used Blue Bonnet butter.  US imports into the PI back then which were aplenty.  And pound cakes and peanut butter cookies were a staple in our kitchen.    The most fun out of making the peanut butter cookies were the criss cross patterns which me and my siblings would fight over who should do it.    

These days, with peanut butter overtaken by Nutella in recent years, the girls were not a bit interested with these.  So I had these to myself and my siblings when they came over.

I'd like to say these are healthy because butter is substituted with coconut oil, and we also made our own peanut butter.  So pretty much, we knew what went into these cookies. 

The cookies came out soft and chewy (as we wanted), but you can always make it crunchy.

If you want to make this with your own peanut butter, The Kitchn has the step by step-step easy procedure to make them.  Of you can simly use store-bought peanut butter.

First you will need peanuts.

For our version of this peanut butter, I used salted peanuts because I didn't want to add any more salt while making them.  I also roasted them in the oven first then cooled before making the nut butter.

Then they go into your food processor.  The first pulse gives you a grainy texture of milled or pounded nuts.

 

The next process gives you a smoother nut butter and almost ready to use.  I just added 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and it was ready!  Poured into a jar and kept at room temperature.  It lasted for more than two weeks.   But of course, we ate them with warm Filipino pandesal bought from our local Asian grocer immediately.  Taste test for quality, as you do. 

To make the peanut butter, I adapted the recipe from Elise at Simply Recipes.

 

Ingredients:

100 grams caster sugar

125 grams light brown sugar, packed

 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter (store bought or home made)

1/2 cup coconut oil

1 egg

325 grams plain flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2  teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Method

In a medium sized bowl, combine the dry ingredients and mix with a whisk.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the coconut oil and sugar until creamy, 2 or more minutes.

Add the peanut butter and eggs and continue beating until light and fluffy.

Add the dry ingredients in 3 batches, continuing to mix with every addition, and until the dough comes off the sides of the bowl. 

Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for 3 hours.

Preheat oven to 175*C.  Prepare a cookie sheet with baking paper or silicone mat.

Shape the dough into rounds, golf ball size.  Place on the prepared pan/cookie sheet 2-3 inches apart.

Flatten the cookies using a fork with a criss cross pattern.

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes for chewy cookies, or until golden.

For crispy cookies, bake in a preheated 180*C oven for 10-12 minutes.

These cookies are not sweet, as I lessened the sugar a little bit, and they were surprisingly good.  There were no coconut flavour or odour which some people dislike when using coconut oil.

Tips and tricks:

* To use coconut oil, it helps when the oil is a little bit solid.  Usually, coconut oil solidifies when the weather is cooler.  If you use liquid coconut oil, it will take longer to beat it until light and fluffy.  To solidify your coconut oil, measure what you need and place it in the fridge overnight, and just take it out an  hour or more before using.  

* The cookies lasts longer than when butter is used.  I tested a few of these, and they kept for two weeks in an air tight container room temperature.