recipe review – tuna fish cakes

I was flipping through the most recent Kraft’s What’s Cooking magazine the other day and I spotted their Tuna Fish Cakes recipe. It’s a little different than their other fish cake recipes.

I did mine today, and a wee bit different. Firstly, I used the mayo that I had, which was Hellmann’s. Chris chooses the mayo, being the major consumer of that product here. Next, I didn’t have any sweet relish (where did it go?!) so I put in about 2 tbsp of Kraft’s poppyseed dressing instead, as a substitute for something sweet. I used babycarrots instead of a big carrot, working with what I had, and again I used only pregrated mozza instead of the mozza-chedder mix recommended. I know, I know, grating it fresh is better, then it’s not coated in flour, blah blah blaaaaaah, I’m making lunch for me and a toddler, not dinner for the queen. Fast = Fabulous.

Here we have everything sitting ready on my PRISTINELY (cough) clean stove. The pan heating, the plate ready to accept fishcakey goodness, and the mix after sitting in the fridge for the required 10 minutes. To try and get a nice shape, I pressed the tuna mix into the 1/4 cup HARD and then shook it out. Not perfect, but whatever, still a fairly good method.  My fish cakes turned out a bit darker than the picture in the magazine, perhaps medium on my stove is a little higher than it was intended for this recipe, but regardless, these turned out super yum.

I haven’t run it past my picky eater yet – that would be Chris, not Nicole – but I really liked them. Considering you spray the pan, you’re not even cooking in oil, so for all the comfort-food-flavour these bad boys pack, they aren’t as bad for you as they taste like they should be. Nicole ate only one, she wasn’t too happy because when I said ‘fish cake’ all she heard was ‘cake.’ But there were no tears involved! She said ‘No thanks, I’m full’ when I offered her more, but at least she ate one. And these didn’t taste overly ‘fishy’, either, in my opinion. Pretty quick and easy, and worth a try in my opinion!

Oh, and those on the plate (and two more) … they are the leftovers. I’m freezing them and then I’ll bag them, I theorize that these will taste good for lunch another day as well, out of the oven. They’re very filling, I think I probably ate two more than I could have. In my defense, the second last one was to show Nicole that they were yummy. The last one… uhhh… I tripped and fell and accidently ate it.

So, to summarize the flavour sensation…. it’s cheesy, it’s crispy on the outside, it’s warm and gooey on the inside… and I am way stuffed so I am going to stop before I talk myself into scarfing another one by accident.