Radish cake 蘿蔔糕

My aunt called me last week for a recipe to the very popular cantonese yum cha item - radish cake 蘿蔔糕. Perhaps she is already  thinking ahead to Chinese New Year! Anyway, since I was writing it down for her, I may as well share it with you too. And, I was inspired to make it so you can see what it will end up looking like!

Ingredients
1.5kg radish
3 slices of ginger
300 gm rice flour

Radish cake cooling in the pan

1Tbsp cornflour
1 Tbsp sugar
1-1.5 tsp white pepper
1.5 tsp salt
water

Note- 1.5 kg is equivalent to 2.5 catty, if you are shopping at the wet market. You will need to buy a little over so that you will still have 1.5kg after peeling and shredding.

1-2 chinese sausages
20 dried shrimps
3 dried chinese mushrooms
5 dried scallops

Method

1. Soak dried shrimps, chinese mushrooms and dried scallops separately. Make sure they are thoroughly soaked, especially the mushrooms and dried scallops. 
2. Dice chinese sausages into small bits.
3. Squeeze dry the mushrooms, remove the stalks and dice into small bits.
4. Pull dried scallops apart, into shreds.
5. Pound the dried shrimps with a pestle and mortar.
6. Heat a frypan, fry chinese sausages until just cooked through but not crispy. Dish up. Then, fry the mushrooms, adding oil in the pan as necessary. Mushrooms soak up a lot or oil. Dish up
7. Next, fry the pounded dried shrimps and scallop shreds with some oil until fragrant. Dish up.
8. Peel and grate the radish. Do not grate too finely. The thickness of 2-3 matchstick would be about right.
9. Heat a wok with 2 tablespoons of oil. Fry ginger slices for a little while then add in shredded radish and sugar. Using medium heat, fry till the radish is soft, about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and remove the ginger. Dish up the radish but leave the liquid (stock) in the wok. Leave the radish to rest for a while and drain any stock from the radish back into the wok.
10. Measure the stock from the radish and add enough water to make up 600 ml. Add in 2 teaspoonfuls of oil.
11. Sift rice flour and cornflour into a large mixing bowl.Stir in liquid and mix well. When the batter is free from lumps, add in radish, meats and mushroom then, season with salt and pepper. Mix well.
12. Oil the steaming pan. Add in radish cake batter and steam in a covered steamer for 1 hour.
13. Cool thoroughly at room temperature. When completely cooled, the steamed radish cake can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for about one week.
14. To serve, cut the radish cake into 3/4 inch slices and fry till both sides are golden brown.
15. To add a spicy twist, you can add in some X.O. sauce when the radish cake is nearly done.

Radish cake-ready to serve