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Fish with Spicy Thai Dressing May 27, 2006
Most of us are familiar with kaffir lime leaves, which are used extensively in Thai cooking. In fact, now the fruit are falling, the leaves on the tree have got tougher and although they are still seriously perfumed, I prefer to hunt around for the smaller tender leaves, though these have amost disappeared. The juice is seldom used in cooking and when I cut these fruit open they weren't particularly juicy and had myriad pips in them. However, I did squeeze what I could out of a few but it wasn't particularly worthwhile. At this stage of the season, however, it's well worth using the fruit for their zest and a microplane grate is ideal for the task. Fish was on the menu - some nice blue warehou fresh from my favourite fishmonger at the South Mebourne market. I've always been a warehou fan. This fish is robust and firm. Though the flesh doesn't look particularly attractive in its uncooked state, it whitens as it cooks. Warehou is not expensive - it was a third to a half of the price of some of the other fresh fish on sale that day - and has a good flavour. I made a simple salad of cos lettuce, red capsicums, fennel, cucumber and blanched green beans. The fish was patted dry, sprinkled with flour and a little dried herb mix then pan-fried in oil. This spicy Thai style dressing really lifted the whole dish. Spicy Thai dressing
Mix all ingredients well together and set aside to give
the flavours a chance to mingle. Just before serving, whisk
well and pour over salad. 
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The
kaffir lime tree has obviously done its thing for the year and
is now shedding golfball-sized fruit everywhere. The spouse
came in with a handful of them the other day and a sort of "you
might want to use these" look in his eye.
Juice of 3-4 kaffir limes plus enough lime juice to
make quantity up to 1/4 cup| ©2000-2011 Pat Churchill