Smoked salmon fish cakes

Submitted by: Sara Stopek

Servings: 8-10

Ingredients: For the fishcakes:
1/2 pound of smoked salmon, the baked-looking kind
1 can wild salmon
4-6 small fingerling potatoes
between 1/2 and 1 teaspoon baking powder
a little vinegar
parsley, chives, dill – whatever you’ve got
a splash of coconut milk

For the creamy goo:
about 3/4 cup cashews, raw
herbs

Instructions: Soak the cashews (overnight is great, but less time will do the trick.)  Boil the potatoes (I left the peel on) till soft.  Let cool a bit, then process in a food processor with a splash of coconut milk.  A lot depends on the moisture and starch content of your potatoes – mine turned into library paste at this point.  (I’m allergic to eggs – but you could just throw in an egg, instead of using my method for your binding & leavening, you lucky duck!)

Drain the can of salmon, and add the fish, along with the smoked salmon to the mix.  Toss in lots of chopped herbs, the lemon juice, and – if necessary – the baking powder & vinegar, which add some leavening.  Adjust the consistency with a little coconut milk – you want to be able to form something like a burger, without it being too dry and dense in the middle.  Add salt, but test first – some canned and smoked salmon is plenty salty.  If your potatoes are more moist, and less starchy, you could sprinkle in a little coconut flour, but don’t make it too thick and dough-y.

So now… form thin cakes, about burger-sized.  And fry them up at medium-high on a nice big griddle, so no one has to wait too long for theirs.  I used coconut oil.

While they’re turning golden, rinse the cashews, and blast them in the food processor with just a little water, and a bunch more herbs.  Taste, and tweak with salt and/or lemon if you like.  You’re going for a sour-cream consistency (if you do sour cream, you could do that, but I don’t do that).  I threw herbs in this mix, too, so the fishcakes had chopped-herb chunks of green, and the creamy goo was all dreamy green.

If your assistant hasn’t already flipped the fishcakes, take care of that.  When they’re golden on both sides, serve with the creamy goo.  I squished it out of a pastry bag into squiggles – that’s how I knew it was Party Fare.

Robb Wolf

Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat, is a former research biochemist and one of the world’s leading experts in Paleolithic nutrition. Wolf has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world via his top ranked iTunes podcast and wildly popular seminar series.