We were asked to prepare a dish for Friday’s family dinner but we only had some available ingredients. A pack of chicken breast gave me the inspiration to make Thai Chicken Balls. Yam! We usually just use the chicken breasts to a quick stir-fry or something simple.
To get the Thai vibe it has to be seasoned with at least some of the possibilities: Oyster sauce, Fish sauce, lemon juice, garlic spicy sauce, ginger (fresh or pickled) and coconut cream.
Chopped some Basil (actually quite a lot) from our herb garden with a red onion and 3 cloves of garlic. I know the classic thai balls are made with cilantro instead of basil but we didn’t have any and people are controversial when it comes to cilantro. Basil is a good alternative.
After chopping..
Adding the chicken breasts (about 600 gr) cut to medium size pieces, then chop it all together again.
Adding all the seasoning sauces and spices from before and bread crumbs / flour or Matza flour in my case. Add salt if you don’t add any (or enough) fish sauce and oyster sauce. A trick from Safta Jean to know weather the mixture is salted right is to take a small pinch and put in the microwave for 10 sec until cooked and taste to fix the salt.
Making balls. It was pretty sticky but still got together nicely in the end, without adding more flour.
I was thinking about putting them in the oven but chickened out and decided to fry them. So I coated every ball with flour before frying.
Low oil frying.
Until firm and golden
Have a little taste in the first batch to decide if anything critical has to be altered before the next batch.
Served with hot chilly sauce and lemon. Everybody liked these balls because the flavors were subtle but noticeable. Charlotte thought they were fish balls because the fish sauce made them feel a bit fishy and the color worked with that feeling. She was very excited to hear it’s chicken, this recipe is dedicated to you Charlotte. 🙂
The salads in this dinner were also interesting. Ariel made a seaweed, beets and cucumber salad with rice vinegar.
Laly made this green bean salad with cashews and cranberries
And regardless of this dinner I wanted to show you that I’ve finally open the huge Hershey’s kiss that Shy brought to me from NY. Nice to see the A-A section:
I thought it would take 10 years for me to open it and when I would it will be already white and eaten by warms. But no! I did not wait so long this time! Thanks Shy! 🙂
