Radish Cake with Pork

Fried Radish Cake with Pork and Mushrooms Recipe

The homestyle, meaty version of that great staple of Chinese breakfast shops and dim sum restaurants, fried radish cake. Although you use four cooking methods (frying, simmering, steaming and frying) to complete the dish, it is fairly easy to make.

10–12 servings

Ingredients
3 oriental cucumbers
1/2 medium-sized carrot
2 tablespoons white rice vinegar
5 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 chilli pepper, sliced
3 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar

Method

1. Peel, and grate radish finely, put aside.
2. Soak mushrooms until soft. Clean and trim stalks. Cut into short, thin strips.
3. Cut shallots into short, thin strips.
4. Heat some oil in a wok, add mushroom and shallots, and stir-fry at a medium heat for a few minutes until fragrant.
5. Add minced pork, and continue to fry until brown.
6. Add oyster sauce, sugar, salt, pepper and five spice powder. Fry for 2 minutes.
7. Add radish to wok, mix in, continue to fry at medium heat until radish threads are soft (10–15 minutes).
8. Add 600 ml of water, stir, bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 2 minutes.
9. In a large bowl, add 400 ml of water to rice flour, mix till smooth. Add to wok gradually, while continuing to stir as mixture thickens.
10. Lightly grease a large pan. Place mixture into a pan. *Steam for about 40 minutes.
11. Allow to cool before running a knife around the inside edge of the pan and carefully turn the cake out onto a cutting board as you would for a sweet cake.
12. Cut cake into 1 cm (1/2″) slices, then cut into manageable size pieces for the frypan.
13. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a flat frypan, and fry radish cake on each side until golden brown and crisp. Add more oil as necessary as you cook through the batch.
14. Serve as is or with chilli or soy sauce.

Notes
*To steam I use an electric rice cooker (basic type with water in the outer pan). If you don’t have one, you need some kind of bain-marie/double boiler arrangement: basically, steam your pan of radish mixture inside a larger covered container with water. Rice flour (rice powder) is not the same as rice starch. This dish is also (mistakenly) known as turnip cake, or loh pak kou.

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CHINESE NAME OF THIS DISH
肉燥蘿蔔糕
ròu zào luóbo gāo

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