Fried Radish Cake

I was very angry after trying Eric Teo’s Fried Carrot Cake recipe in his Simply Singaporean recipe book. Shouldn’t someone test all the recipes first? Or check for errors? Rice flour was only 20g. Initially, I thought it’s really too little to form carrot cake. However, went ahead believing that it’s Chef Eric Teo. It could be correct.

This is the result after steaming. It’s so watery! Had to throw this away. Wasted time, ingredient costs and gas. I steamed this for over an hour because it looked too watery.

Undeterred, I tried making carrot cake again. This time, using a ratio method seen in Cold Storage’s inaugural issue of Savour the Good Life magazine.

On page 46, someone asked how to cook Chinese radish cake so that it’s soft and tender. The respondent was Master chef Leong Chee Yeng from Jade restaurant at Fullerton Hotel. He said to get a smooth and soft radish cake, the batter should have 3.5 parts grated radish, 5 parts water, 1 part rice flour and 0.5 part corn flour.

I have a 400g radish.

So, I worked out the following proportions.

Ingredients

400g Shredded Radish / Daikon
580g Water
120g Rice Flour
60g cornflour

Method

1. Add shredded radish in a pot of 400ml of boiling water with 2 tsp of salt. Boil for about 20min or till the radish is translucent and soft. At the end of 20min, there isn’t much water left in my pot. You may need to adjust water for rice flour and cornflour if you boil it with much more water.

2. Dissolve rice flour and cornflour in 580g water. Pour into the pot of cooked shredded radish and stir.

3. Pour the mixture into a square tin and steam for 40min. When it’s done, it should form a “cake” which is soft but not watery.

4. Wait for the steamed radish cake to cool and set before cutting and frying.

To fry radish cake for 2 person, use about 1/4 cup of oil. Heat it up over medium heat. Add garlic (and some chye poh if you like) and fry till fragrant. Then add the radish cake. Use spatula to cut radish cake to smaller pieces as seen below.

Press the radish cake to the wok and brown both sides.

Beat eggs and pour over the browned radish cake. Then fry. Add a few dashes of fish sauce and pepper. Add a few leaves of Chinese parsley and stir a bit before serving.

Some like there radish cake browned and crispy. I like mine lightly brown, soft and lots of pepper on top. So, you decide when is the best time to serve 🙂

Btw, this plain version is different from another carrot cake recipe posted some time ago. You can eat the earlier version pan-fried on its own w/o eggs or other condiments. This plain version is for frying Singapore’s hawker style carrot cake.