Thai Falafel

You could call this 'vegetarian fishcakes', but I think Thai Falafel is more appropriate.

• 400 g dried butter beans (or tinned butter beans)
  
• 1 onion, very finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 tbsp (red) thai chili paste
• 1 tsp lime zest
• 1 spring onion or a bunch of chives, finely chopped
  
• handful of coriander, chopped
• lime juice aand fish sauce to taste
• flour
  
• thai chilli sauce
• fresh salad leaves (iceberg or romaine)
  

Soak the beans overnight and remove the skins. Boil the beans until soft (appr. 45 minutes, depending on the age of your beans). Omit this step when using tinned beans. Drain the beans and mash with a fork or an appropriate electric tool.

Heat the oil in a frying pan, fry the onion for 5 minutes, add the crushed garlic, fry for 2 more minutes, add the chilli paste and fry for another minute. Add this mixture to the bean mash, blend and add the lime zest and the fresh herbs. Let cool season to taste with lime juice and fish sauce. All this can be done one or two days ahead.

Form the mush into falafels, fischcakes or any other shape you fancy, roll in flour and shallow-fry in hot oil. Serve with salad leaves and thai chilli sauce.

Meanwhile we have seen two films, The Merchant of Venice (with Al Pacino as Shylock) and Man on the Moon (Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman), and we saw the Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sickert exhibition at Tate Britain.