I love turnip cake since I was young. I just love the taste of the fragrant turnip/radish. The recipes seems a little daunting initially but for the love of radish, I’m willing to do anything! Haha, just kidding.
Getting the ingredients ready. These are the Chinese “four treasures”.
Stir frying the diced ingredients before adding the turnip and flour mixture.
After steaming and letting to rest before cutting.
Pan frying the cake, delicious!
I usually make a big portion and eat them over the next 1-2 days. You can pan fry them and eat it with sweet sauce and chilli, or cut them up into smaller pieces and stir fry it the ‘black carrot cake’ style.
ingredients
1 kg radish(approximately one large radish)
150 grams rice flour
25 grams corn flour
3 dried mushroom
1 Chinese waxed sausage
4 dried medium size scallops or 8 small ones
30 gram dried shrimps or hei bi
3 small shallots, sliced
seasonings
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 tbsp oil
instructions
- Shred the turnip/radish and place in a colander for approximately 30 minutes to drain and collect the juice. Save the juice.
- Wash the dried shrimps, mushroom and scallops and sausage. Soak them in hot water separately for 15-20 minutes, saving the soaking water from the mushroom, sausage and scallop and add to the juice from the radish. Keep approximately 1 3/4 cup of the total collected fluid and discard the rest.
- Remove and discard the stem of the mushroom and dice up the mushroom. Dice up the sausage and shred the scallops. Slice the shallots finely and roughly chop the shrimps if they are big.
- Marinate the diced mushroom, shrimps and scallops in 1/2 teaspoon sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon of hsiao xing wine. (Or hua tiao wine). Marinate for 10 minutes.
- In the mean time, heat up 3 tablespoon of oil in wok. Sauté the shallots till fragrant, then add in the sausage. When the sausage is fragrant, add in the marinated dice mushroom/shrimps/scallops mixture and continue to stir fry. When everything is turning golden, add in the shredded turnips and seasonings. Add the two flours to the liquid from the soaking/draining and mix well.
- Stirring occasionally, the turnips will begin to produce liquid and be soft when cooked. Cook it a little longer and mix the flour mixture in and stir immediately. Keep stirring till the mixture turns very sticky and paste-y, almost dough-like. Turn off the heat and scoop into a metal tray for steaming.
- Steam for 40-50 minutes. Cool and cut.
note
When the cake is Cooked it will be a little sticky, let it air dry and cool for a while before cutting. Chilling it will make it easier to cut.
