Four weeks ago, I had dinner with some friends at a Korean bbq restaurant next to a Chinese grocery.  Afterwards, we all went to the store to walk off the several pounds of grilled meats we had just stuffed down our throats.  It was exciting for me because as I’ve mentioned before, it’s rare that I go to Asian grocery stores since I live so much closer to a Giant and Costco.  I was walking through the produce section, and I saw a bin of daikon radishes.  When I see daikon radishes, my first thought is LUO BUO GAO!  Or in English, turnip cakes.  You see this dish at dim sum restaurants.  Tender cakes made out of radish, Chinese bacon or sausage, and dried mushroom, and then the outside is fried to golden crispiness.  I don’t know why they call it turnip cake when it’s made out of radish, but whatever.  Although important note: DO NOT use regular white turnips for this dish.  I tried it once.  Daikon radish ≠ white turnip.  Sad face.

My friend who was walking around with me had recently sent me a picture of daikon radishes that her mom was going to use for turnip cakes.  When I saw the bin of daikons and my friend, my initial thought was that I wanted, no NEEDED to eat turnip cakes.  I impulsively bought a daikon radish, but then I regretted it immediately afterwards.

Flashback!  Several years ago, I had a craving for radish cakes.  But it’s not like I live terribly close to dim sum restaurants, and the wait times to get a table on the weekends can be ridiculous.  To satisfy my craving, I went to the Asian store and got some ready to fry turnip cakes.  They were disappointing to say the least.  Maybe I got the wrong brands, but regardless, they were no good.  So I did a search for turnip cake recipes to see if they are something I can make at home.  I mentioned this before, but I am not well versed in producing Chinese cuisine.  I’ve eaten Chinese food all my life, and growing up, I watched my mom cook it everyday, but I never really learned how to make it.  I make my Americanized version of Chinese food sometimes, but it’s difficult for me to reproduce the flavors found in authentic home cooking or restaurants.  I’m sure I can improve if I practice…but man!  Chinese food takes so long to make.  Depending on the dish, there can be so much freaking prep work: washing, peeling, chopping, soaking, marinating, rolling doughs, wrapping shit up.  Not to mention the lengthy lists of aromatics and seasonings to obtain: ginger, garlic, green onion, chili peppers, star anise, cinnamon sticks, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, cooking wine, chili sauce, oyster sauce, etcetcetc!  It can be daunting to take on Chinese cooking, and it’s just not something I prioritize in making, so alas, I am still a newb.  Ok, back to the story. I took on the slightly intimidating task of making turnip cake at home.  Good news is that it tasted fantastic.  I experimented several times and came up with my own recipe, and it brings a joyful tear to my eye that I was actually able to make Chinese food that tastes like something from a restaurant.  Actually, it tastes even better than some restaurants I’ve been to.  YEEEEAH WHAT.

Now to the bad news.  It took sooo long to make.  After I bought the blasted daikon radish, I remembered that it takes forever to make the damn thing.  Ok I exaggerate, but it does take some time to make them.  But it was too late.  I told myself and my friends that I would make turnip cakes.  I had to commit.

I threw my daikon in a fridge drawer, and after I closed the drawer, I closed it out of my mind.  I could not deal with daikon drama yet.  After two weeks, I finally uncovered my poor rejected daikon.  It was in a sad state, all soft and limp.  But I rescued it!  I gave it the veggie viagra treatment.  I put the radish in a glass with a couple inches of water, asphyxiated it, and refrigerated it.  It got all hard and happy again, and it was ready to get some.  However, I was not ready for some radish fun, so I left it in the water glass for two more weeks.  After four weeks of loneliness, the radish was still good!  The asphyxiation method works for other veggies too, I’ve tried it on green onion, carrots, lettuces, herbs.  I wrote about how I preserve herbs and veggies before, take a look for more tips.  Don’t waste food!

By the way, to be clear, this is a chunky turnip cake.  My favorite part of the turnip cake is when I get meaty bites.  I feel cheated when I eat turnip cakes that are all batter and no substance.  My obvious solution is to pack in the meeeat.  If you don’t like chewing, or prefer a smoother turnip cake, then decrease the amount of filling, or mince them finely, or puree the shit out of it.  Whatever.  You do you.

There are many steps to this dish, and there were times when I was doing several things at the same time, so bear with me, and hopefully this isn’t too confusing.  This is a good dish to practice your multitasking skills.

Here is my happy daikon finally ready for some action.  It was a tad over 2 pounds.

After I peeled the radish, I used my mandolin to shred it up.  Please use the hand guard once you get close to the end of the radish.  Shredded fingers would totally ruin this dish.  If you don’t have a mandolin, then use some other tool to shred this baby up.  My hefty radish came out to be around 4.5 cups packed.

Put the shredded radish into some kind of pot or wok.  I have my rarely used nonstick wok.  Add enough water to cover the radish, cover the wok, and simmer the radish for around 20 minutes.

After the radish is done simmering away, drain it and put it in a big bowl.  DO NOT discard the turnip water.  We will use it soon enough.

When I was at the Chinese store, I got the other fixings that go with the turnip cake.  Actually, my friend helped me get them.  Have you all seen the selection of Chinese sausage at the store!?  Dude, it’s always a crapshoot for me since I don’t know which brands are the good ones, and since I get them so rarely, I forget which brands I like and dislike.  So my more experienced friend selected a package of Chinese sausage for me.  I like how each portion is wrapped.  Usually the whole mass of sausages are clumped together, so they all need to be used up once open.  This brand was a little lean for my taste, but the flavor was good.

Finely chop up the sausages.  This was around 4 ounces of sausage.

Even with my lack of experience, I am still more accustomed to using Chinese sausage in my cooking.  My friend was like, you have to get Chinese bacon too!  So I was like, um ok, and she picked out a pack for me.  The last time I used Chinese bacon was four years ago, so I was rather rusty with my bacon handling.  She warned me that I have to soften it first, and I was like, eh…? and then I forgot about it after I threw the bacon into my fridge with the radish.  Note: If you only want to use bacon or only want to use sausage, that’s cool.  Still damn tasty.  These are also portioned, so I don’t have to use everything once the pack is open.  I hate the over usage of plastic, but in this case, I won’t use up the whole pack before they go bad, so I need to pick and choose my environmental battles.

I remembered my friend’s warning to soften the bacon first.  The package had instructions to steam the bacon, but unburying my steamer was a pain, so I turned to the internets, and Serious Eats had a post about Chinese bacon, and they soaked the bacon for several hours to soften it.  Grabbing a storage container was a lot easier than finding my steamer, so score!  I left the bacon covered with water overnight.

After the overnight soak, I cut off the hard rind and chopped up the now much softer bacon.  I ended up with around 4 ounces of bacon.  I didn’t want to just throw out the rinds, so they’re still in my fridge.  I’m going to cook it with some vegetables and hopefully give an extra boost of flavor.

Now on to more soaking.  I got six dried mushrooms and covered them with freshly boiled water.  I have no idea what kind of mushrooms these are.  The dried mushroom section at Asian stores are quite mysterious.  Many of the labels just say mushroom.  I just picked a pack.  They have served me well, so, yay!  I let the mushrooms soak up the hot water for about 20 minutes.

I also got 1/3 cup of dried shrimp and also soaked them in boiling water for about 20 minutes.

After their hot soak, I squeezed the water out of the mushrooms and shrimp, and chopped them up.  Cut off the ends of the mushrooms if they are too woody and hard.  I very finely chopped the shrimp because I don’t like chewing on big pieces of sharp shells.  DO NOT discard the mushroom and shrimp water.  That there is crucial umami water.  We will be using it in the dish.  Any leftover water can be added to soups, cook your rice in it, make a sauce, something.  Just don’t toss it.

Finely chop up a bunch of green onion.

Here is my mess of various dishes taking up my counter top.

Finally, we are done with the soaking and chopping!  Pour a little oil into a pan and cook the bacon on medium-low/medium heat for around 3 minutes or until the fat begins to render.  If my sausage was fattier, then I would have cooked it with the bacon to render some of its fat.  But since it was so lean, I just waited to add the sausage.

Add the mushrooms, shrimp, sausage, and green onion.  Cook for around 3-4 minutes, or until you get hit with some serious savory aromatherapy.

Add 1 tbs of cooking rice wine and 2 tsp of sugar.  You’ll get hit with a sweet boozy scent at this point.  Cook for another couple of minutes.

Combine the meat mixture with the cooked radish.  It’s getting real in there.

Here’s another Asian store find.  We’ll need 2 cups of rice flour.  When you are buying rice flour, you might see glutinous rice flour next to the regular rice flour.  DO NOT use glutinous rice flour.  I’m actually a little curious how the dish would turn out if sticky glutinous rice flour is used, so if anyone does it on purpose or by accident, let me know how it is!

Remember the umami water?  Mix the mushroom and shrimp water together and use 1.5 cups for the batter.  There will be some sediment at the bottom of the bowl.  That’s like dirt and bits of shrimp parts, you can toss that.  Stir the water into the rice flour to make a smooth thin pancake like batter.  Add 2 tbs soy sauce and a generous pinch of salt.

Pour the batter into the radish mixture and combine well.

We will need to steam the cake.  I do not have a steamer big enough for this purpose, so I will do what my mom does and Macgyver that ish.  Man, I miss seeing Richard Dean Anderson, maybe I will watch Stargate again.  Remember the wok full of radish water?  That will be the steaming water.  I inverted a small heatproof bowl, and placed it in the wok.

The recipes I’ve seen for radish cake use a loaf pan.  But my loaf pan will not fit in my wok, so I usually use a regular cake pan.  This time, my eyes fell on my bundt pan, and I thought what the hell, why not?  So I sprayed my bundt pan with Pam, and poured the batter in.  The water was touching the cake pan, but that is ok.  As long as the bottom and sides of the pan are not touching the wok.  I have no idea what the serving size of this dish is, but it is enough for one bundt cake.

Cover the wok up and steam on low heat for 1 hour.  The cake is done when the batter firms up and it’s not all wet and mushy.  I just poked at it a bit to check the mushiness level.  Check the water level periodically and refill if necessary.  Don’t be like me and try to burn down the kitchen.  Segue to a helpful tip!

I forgot to refill the water, and I was left with this crusty shit.  But it’s ok!  I fixed it!

I wrote a post about this before, but if you have a crusty burnt mess in your cooking vessel, you can clean it without any scrubbing.  I sprinkled about 1/3 cup of baking soda into the wok, covered the bottom with water, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.  Then I used a rubber spatula and scraped the burnt bits right off.

Tadaa!  This is after I poured out the burnt baking soda water.  The crusty shit is gone, the white spots are from the baking soda.

Back to the main story.  Here is my beautiful turnip bundt cake.  Ok, so about the bundt pan.  I  used it for the hell of it, but note that when you slice the cake to fry, one side of the piece will be a bit thicker.  But that didn’t matter much to me, so whatever.  After the cake is done steaming, loosen the sides from the pan.  I let mine cool down slightly before dumping it out of the pan.  The cake will be too soft to slice for frying, so again with the waiting game.  I sprayed some Pam on the cake and wrapped it with some plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge.  A few hours should be good, but I just left it overnight.  Note, turnip cake freezes well.

Now for the most anticipated part!  Once the cake is cool and firm, slice it for frying.  I sliced mine into 0.5 inch pieces.  Fry each side for about 3 minutes, or until your desired golden crispness.

YES.  YES.  Finally.  After literally days of preparation.  I like eating my turnip cake with a bit of garlic chili oil.  Mmm.  Was it worth the work and wait?  Hell yes.  Will I do it again?  Maybe in a few years once I’ve forgotten how annoying it is to make.  It’s like having another baby after a few years of respite.  Yes cuteness and more cuteness, oooooh wait, sooo much work…

Turnip Cake

Ingredients (Remember, chunky!  Decrease meats or find another recipe if you don’t want this)
– 2 pounds of daikon radish (around 4.5 cups packed)
– 4 ounces of Chinese bacon
– 4 ounces of Chinese sausage
– 6 dried mushrooms
– 1/3 cup of dried shrimp
– 1 bunch of green onion
– 2 cups rice flour
– 1 tablespoon cooking rice wine
– 2 teaspoons sugar
– 2 tablespoons soy sauce
– salt
– oil

Directions (Do the prep work in whatever order works for you)
– Peel the radish and shred with your choice of kitchen tool.  Put the shredded radish into a wok and cover with water.  Cover the wok and simmer on low heat for 20 minutes.  Drain the radish and place into a large bowl.  Keep the radish water in the wok.
– Soak the Chinese bacon or follow the steaming instructions on the package to soften the meat.  Cut off the rind and finely chop the meat up.
– Put the mushrooms in a bowl, and cover them with hot water.  Soak for 20 minutes.
– Put the dried shrimp in a bowl, cover with hot water, and soak for 20 minutes.
– Squeeze the water out of the mushrooms and shrimp, and finely chop them up.  Discard the woody ends of the mushroom if they are too hard.  KEEP the soaking water.
– Finely chop up the Chinese sausage.
– Finely chop up the green onion.
–  Oil a pan and cook the bacon on medium low/medium heat for 3 minutes or until the fat starts to melt.  If your sausage is very fatty, cook it with the bacon to melt the fat.
– Add the sausage (if lean), mushroom, shrimp, and green onion to the bacon.  Cook for another 3 minutes or so.  You’ll smell a very fragrant aroma after a few minutes of cooking.
– Add the sugar and rice wine to the mix, and cook for couple minutes.
– Mix the whole lot into the bowl of radish.  Combine well.
– Mix the rice flour with 1.5 cups of the mushroom and shrimp water until you get a smooth and thin pancake like consistency.  Add the soy sauce and a big pinch of salt.
– Mix the batter into the bowl of radish and combine well.
– Grease a heatproof vessel of your choice and pour the mixture in.
– Put the heatproof vessel into a steamer and steam for 1 hour.  Check the water level periodically and refill with water if necessary.  The cake is done when the batter firms up and the batter is no longer mushy and wet.
– Cool the cake and remove from the pan.  Store the cake in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight until the cake is completely cold and firm.
– Slice the cake into whatever size pieces you want, and fry for 3 minutes on each side, or until it is as golden brown as your stomach desires.