Sweet Potato and Salmon Cakes

Sweet Potato and Salmon Cakes
Home Cooking

I've recently taken yet another step towards becoming the ultimate sloth. Don't get me wrong. I work full time. My weekends are jam packed with activities (what isn't food-related will be alcohol related). The time between when I finish work and go to sleep flies by so fast that I find myself writing OCD notes in my diary to remind myself to do menial tasks like showering and nails.

With this, I justify that my day off should be spent as lazily as possible. That's easier said than done because as I've mentioned on this blog many times before, I don't possess the ability to sleep in. I've also designated my day off as my cooking and baking day and I try to do 2-3 recipes (I have to take advantage of daylight for my photos) so that's not really resting, but cooking is fun.


One way I used to force myself out of the house to fuel up and get groceries but now that I've discovered Coles Online home delivery, I get my goods sent directly to my door every day. This has been working out great (although I find that I spend much more online grocery shopping than when I go to the physical store, similar to when I do online clothes or shoe shopping) but one time, I must have misread a line and I ended up buying 2kg of sweet potatoes instead of 2.

I now have a lot of sweet potatoes.

You're going to see a host of sweet potato recipes emerge on this blog.

The first of these is for sweet potato and salmon cakes. I orginally found something about sweet potato and tuna cakes on Taste.com but cans of salmon were on sale so I substituted those instead. I'm sure you can use whatever.

Sweet Potato and Salmon Cakes
Makes approx 10 small patties

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup cooked sweet potato (I boiled mine but you can microwave or roast)
• 2 x 95g can salmon in spring water or brine, drained (you can use tuna instead)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs (plus more for coating)
• salt and pepper
• fresh lemon wedges and mayonnaise, to serve

Procedure:

1. Mash the sweet potato with a fork. Chunky bits aren't necessarily bad so you don't have to get too carried away here.

2. Add the salmon, egg and bread crumbs, salt and pepper.

3. Mush away until the mixture comes together.

4. Roll balls of the mixture about the size of a large walnut and coat with breadcrumb.

5. Flatten each ball so they're not too thick and easier to cook.

6. Heat some oil in a fry pan on medium-high and cook each side for about 3-4 minutes until they're golden brown and cooked throughout.

7. Serve hot with a fresh salad, lemon wedges and mayonnaise. I used baby rocket, which I thought was a great accompaniment.

This recipe is so easy to do. The ingredients are basically cooked before being moulded into patties (besides the egg, which is used as a binding agent), so you can easily store them away and fry them as needed. I ended up freezing most of these and having them for lunch throughout the week with a light salad. All you have to do is microwave for a couple of minutes to warm them up a bit before pan-frying to crip up the exterior.

Many people will think of mayonnaise as an optional accompaniment. I beg to differ in this instance. Mayonnaise and sweet potato is one of those combinations that aren't immediately obvious but once you try it, you'll realize that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I was trying to think of nifty examples to give for this post and asked Marc for help. He suggested pizza and beer, fish and chips, bacon and 'anything' (doesn't help) or sashimi and naked people (is he taking this seriously?).

For me, combinations I can't go past (aside from sweet potato and mayonnaise, obviously) include warm bread and butter, chili and sour cream, and anything desserty with salt in it. What are yours?