Chinese radish cake or turnip cake is a famous Chinese dessert available during the morning dim sum, Yun Cha. In Chinese, we name this type of cake as Gao in marinade or Gow in Cantonese dialect. There are also fried sponsored cake and taro cake. Those savory and yummy cake desserts are perfect side dish for a morning tea especially in fall or winter. either you can prepare this mouth watering cake at home or can also order it from freshmenu coupons and get it delivered to your doorstep hot and sizzling.
Turnip Cake-Radish Cake
Preparation time: 30 mins
Cook Time: 1 hr
Total Time: 1 hr 30 mins
Ingredients
- 300 g plain rice flour
- 1000 g Fresh long radish , aka daikon/turnip
- 800 ml water including the water squeezed from the white radish
- 3-4 middle size shiitake mushroom
- 1 teaspoon Chinese five spice powder , can be replaced by white pepper powder
- 1 tablespoon dried shrimp-pre soaked
- 100 g Chinese sausage
- 1/4 middle size red onion
- 3 green onions
- 1/2 tablespoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- Vegetable cooking oil as needed
- 1 tablespoon cooking wine
Instructions
- In a small bowl, soak the dried shrimp until softened. Set aside, drain well and cut both shrimp and shiitake mushroom into really small cubes.
- Peel all the skin of radish and then use a shredder to finely shred the radish. If you do not want to taste any radish texture in the final cake, shred the radish as small as possible.
- Transfer shredded radish in a large pot or bowl, spread salt on the surface and rub with hand. Set aside for around 20 minutes to 30 minutes until the radish shreds are totally softened.
- To prepare the side ingredients: in a small pan, add around 1/2 tablespoon oil and then fry onions, dried shrimp, sausage and shitake mushroom until aroma. Set aside.
- Squeeze the water out and transfer to another large mixing pot. Mix all the flour with the water squeezed out from the radish and the left water. Add radish shreds and Chinese five spice powder. Mix well and heat over medium fire to boil.
- Add other side ingredients and mix well.
- Brush some oil on your container and then transfer the mixture to the container. Steam for around 50 minutes; absorb any water on surface with a clean gauze or towel.
- Cut into slices around 1.5 cm in thickness after cooling down.
- Pan-fry until slightly brown on both sides. Sprinkle some chopped green onion and serve with your favorite tea.
Conclusion
Enjoy your tea with these turnip cakes and devour into some delicious flavors to embrace your taste buds. Food with white color, like radish and lotus root, lotus seeds, and white lily are considered to be beneficial lung according to Wuxing Healthy Science. I did not test it but eating white food in fall and winter is a long Chinese history. To make this radish cake at home, usually we need long radish (turnip), shitake mushroom, dried shrimp and Chinese sausage also known as Leop Cheung. However if you failed to find Chinese sausage, you can replace it with fresh ground pork.
