Breaded Fish Cakes

We recently had some delicious fish cakes at an Asian restaurant, so I was interested in trying my hand at the art - in the end these were quite different from the ones we had at the restaurant (but still delicious) so I'll probably return with further variations on this theme.

Ingredients
- 500 g (just over 1 lb) potatoes, peeled, cut in chunks
- 400 g (just under 1 lb) pollock fillet
- 2 dL (almost 1 cup) milk
- 1 green chilli, seeds removed, finely chopped
- 16 g (0.5 oz) fresh ginger, finely diced
- 3 scallions, green part only, sliced
- 20 g (0.7 oz) fresh basil, coarsely chopped
- salt
- 1 egg, beaten
- bread crumbs (to cover)
- oil for frying

The potato chunks were boiled tender in lightly salted water. After draining them thoroughly, they were put back in the dry pot and mashed on low heat to give a relatively dry mash. Care was taken not to let them burn (constant stirring/mashing while on the heat).

Simultaneously the fish was put in a frying pan with the milk and 1 dL (almost 1/2 cup) of water, covered, and brought to a boil. The heat was then reduced to allow it to simmer for 5 minutes before removing the pan from the heat. Still covered the fish was let stand 10 minutes in the warm milk to gently finish. Afterwards the fish was lifted out of the milk on to a plate to cool.

The cooled fish was drained, then flaked into the potato mash. The salt, basil, scallions, ginger, and chilli was added, and the the entire mixture was worked together by hand. [1]

The fish cakes were formed and flattened by hand, turned over in egg and bread crumbs and fried till golden brown on both sides in oil on a large pan.

Served with wild rice, cucumber salad and peanut dipping.

[1] I think if I try this again, I would spend an extra egg on the dish to see if the fish cake mass could have a little less tendency to fall apart.

Update: Using more fish relative to potato gives a better result - but you have to use more eggs.