Chinese Radish Cake

This is probably my favourite dim sum dish. It is one of those dim sum dishes I always get yet always complain about how either the Chinese radish tastes bitter or they put too little other goodies in it. And what really strike me to try making this dish is that It costs about $4 to have only 3 slices of this goodness! I can tell you spend an afternoon making this, and you'll be happy about eating a whole 12" by 12" tray of it! At minimal costs too! I would say with everything we bought to make this, this recipe costs about less than $15. So worth it and it is delicious! We have this for two breakfast in a row. We just try to freeze some in sealable bags... I'll let you know how well it freeze and cook again.

Chinese Radish Cake (蘿蔔糕)

Ingredients:
2 kg Chinese white radish (白蘿蔔), weight after peeling (about 5 medium size ones, 4 radish were grated and 1 chopped into cube size for added texture)
1 cup rice flour (粘米粉)
1 cup corn starch
up to 350mL room temp. water

1/2 cup dried shrimps (蝦米), soak in water for 30 minutes and finely diced
8 medium size dried Chinese mushrooms (冬菇), soak in water for >2hrs and finely diced
6 Chinese sausages (臘腸), finely diced
4 stalks of green onion, finely diced

Seasoning:
2  teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoon chicken stock granules
2 teaspoon brown sugar
2 teaspoon canola oil

1. Fry the Chinese sausages until oil starts to seep out. Add the green onion, dried shrimps and mushrooms and continue to fry over low fire until fragrant. Place in a bowl for later.

2. Grate the radish directly into a big bowl with a drainer. In a separate large bowl, add the rice flour and corn starch. Collect radish water from the grated radish into a measuring cup. Top the water until 350mL. Mix in the radish water into the rice flour and corn starch mixture until smooth. (Make sure there is no lumps). Switch on the fire and fry the grated radish. Add seasoning, stir and cover for 15 minutes. Add the fried meat and mushrooms and mix well. Switch to low heat, add the rice flour-corn starch-radish water mixture into the pan and mix well. Mixture will become very thick and difficult to stir. Low heat cook until the mixture becomes paste like and turns slightly colourless.

3. Oil a 30 cm/12" round tin lightly and scoop the batter into the tin, making sure you compact the batter firmly. Level the top. Bake at 350F for 1.5 hour with a small bowl of water in the oven. To check if it is done, stick a wooden chopstick in the middle of the pan to see if the batter mixture stick to the chopstick. If it doesn't stick to the chopstick then it is ready. The cake will be very soft when hot but firm when cool. You can eat it straightaway when it is still warm (but it'll be soft) or chill it overnight, cut into small slices and fry in a little bit of oil.

note: It is best to chill the cake for 24 hours so that when you slice it, it won't stick to your knife. I've tried cutting about 14 hours later and it was quite messy and broke up easily when frying.