Chinese Radish Cake

or law Bak Gou whatever they call it seems to be the dish we always order whenever we eat dim sum. Although there's no carrots in this recipe, I'm so used to calling it fried carrot cake.. Anyway while scouring the net for good food as usual, I chanced upon this blog called tastehongkong.com with amazingly good local dishes. That brought me on a quest to test out this Turnip cake with the addition of chinese sausage or Lap Chiong ;))) Mmh the taste of chinese sausage is just heavenly.. Bring it together with its fellow brother the " black liver sausage" and you have a harmony of flavors..

You can get the recipe from here.  I love how the cake turned out but I was a little lazy to fry them thus I just made do with the steam version. Obviously, I would recommend pan frying them cuz they will definitely taste better crispy..

You'll need the following:

• Ingredients
• 2kg turnip/ white radish ( Well, I bought 2 big oness about 2kg. But when I shredded them, they only turned out to be about 800g) Must have lost loads in the process of shredding them. Thus I half ed the subsequent amounts
• 300g rice flour (150g)
• 50g corn starch (25g)
• 2 pcs Chinese sausages (~100g) - I didn't half the ingredients..
• 6 pcs dried black mushroom
• 4 pcs dried scallop
• 30g dried shrimps
• 2 each shallots, finely sliced 

• Marinades
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp wine

• Seasonings
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tbsp oil

Well if you don't have a shredder machine like me, you just gotta do it the hard way. Works the arm muscles totally. The faster you shred the radish the easier it is.. so don't go so gentle on it. hahaaa

THERE! 

1) Turnips: Peel, rinse, shred  Rest all the turnip strips in a colander above a basin to drain and collect its juice. Draining the turnips is to prepare it for stir-frying as well as to reserve its juice for combining with the rice flour and corn starch.

dried scallops – rinse, soak in 1/2 cup of water for at least an hour, tear them into strips, reserve water

dried shrimps – rinse, soak in 1/2 cup of water for 10 minutes, discard water

Chinese sausages – rinse, coarsely chopped

dried mushrooms – rinse, soak in 1 cup of water for at least an hour or until soft, squeeze water in them and coarsely chopped, reserve water

Marinade the reconstituted, chopped mushrooms, scallops and shrimps for about 10 minutes.

3) Combine the corn starch and rice flour with 2 1/2 cups of water (inclusive of those collected from draining the turnip, soaking the mushrooms and scallops). Stir and mix well until smooth. Set aside.

4) Heat 3 table spoons of oil in wok over medium heat, sauté shallots till fragrant followed by chopped sausages, stir fry till they are also fragrant, then add in shrimps, mushrooms and scallops, keep stir frying. As all of them turn golden, about 3 minutes, toss in the turnip strips, add seasonings, and stir well. In about another 5 minutes, the strips will be softened and juice will exude from them.

5) Turn to low heat, slowly stir in flour mixture into the turnips (give the mixture a good stir before pouring in to avoid flour settling at the bottom). Turn and mix well until all incorporated well like a soft batter. Turn off heat.

6) Grease dish for steaming Transfer the turnip batter into the pan, flatten it into same height. Steam the turnip cake over high heat for 40 minutes. Check doneness by inserting a toothpick to see if it comes out clean.

 and we're good to go!! :)

       

Enjoy! xoxo