Fried Radish/ Carrot Cake (Cooking 101) 菜头糕

When it comes to cooking/ baking, I have to admit that I am totally at a loss when I want to cook. My family hardly cooks at home because we are always not at home. Once in awhile, I will have the urge to cook something really random. As we hardly cook, there's not much seasoning at home. I have to really buy EVERYTHING (including soy sauce/ oil/ pepper) if I want to cook.

I call this Cooking 101 because it's like cooking for those who really don't know how to cook. I know nothing about cooking so I really follow the recipes that I find. After cooking, learn from the session and figure out what needs to be changed.

Fried Radish/Carrot Cake 菜头糕 came to mind when I was watching the television programme and they were eating that dish. I immediately went to google for a recipe and got all the ingredients.
Here's the recipe:

Ingredients for the cake
- Radish (around 700g)
- 50ml water
- 200g rice flour (white rice)
- 250ml water
- 1/4 tsp salt

Method
1. Grate the radish. Initially I could not find the grater at home so I painstakingly cut the radish with a really small/ pathetic knife.
2. To a stainless steel container, add the grated radish and 50ml of water.
3. Leave to steam at medium heat for 30 minutes until the radish turns translucent. Leave to cool.
4. Premix 200g rice flour,  250ml water and 1/4tsp salt. Mix well.
5. Add the rice flour mixture from step 4 into the stainless steel container containing the grated radish and mix well.
6. Steam mixture on high heat for 40 minutes.
7. After 40 minutes, leave mixture to cool.
8. Cool overnight in fridge.

Remember I said that I had to cut the radish with a knife initially? The batch which was made with that did not turn out as well as the one that I used a grater. The one with the knife had really obvious radish slices and after steaming, the top layer was really watery. Yes please do not use a knife like me. I almost died using the knife.

Obvious radish slices as a result of using a knife

This is what it is supposed to look like after 40 minutes of steaming

I left the cake overnight in the fridge and I loved the smell of radish in my fridge after that! (smell didn't last for very long)

Ingredients for frying the cake

- 1-2 tsp of Chai Poh

- 2-3 eggs (I used more as I really like to eat eggs)

- 3 cloves of minced garlic

- 2 tsp of fish sauce

- 3 tsp vegetable oil

- white pepper

- thick sweet sauce (if you want the black version)

Method

- Cut up the radish cake into small chunks

- Heat oil and fry the small chunks of radish cake until lightly browned and slightly crisp.

- Add minced garlic and chai poh. Fry until aromatic. Add more oil if it's too dry.

- Add fish sauce. Fry to coat evenly.

- Pour eggs over radish cake. All eggs to settle slightly before flipping.

- Add white pepper (up to your own preference)

- Add Chilli (own preference)

Finished product

It doesn't taste like those you have at hawker centres but the cake was pretty good. The amount of cake made from this was enough for 4 people. Just need to work on tweaking some of the ingredients to make it taste better. Mine was a little too salty as I added a lot more fish sauce. Overload of radish cake that day.

First attempt success!