STEAMED TURNIP CAKE
An easy recipe for Cantonese salty turnip cakes
We usually make this cake in winter time. I got this recipe originally from
a magazine in Hong Kong. It is a new
and easy way to make this Cantonese specialty.
I have tried this recipe on about ten Americans. They all like it.
Ingredients
- 500 g corn starch
- 800 ml cold water
- 3 kg turnips,
peeled and grated
- 300 g Cantonese sausage
(about 8 sausages)
- 50 g Chinese dried shrimps
- 100 ml cooking oil
- 5 ml soy sauce
- 2.5 ml sugar
- 500 ml chicken broth
(or use water and bouillon cubes).
- 100 ml water
- 15 ml cooking wine
- 15 ml sugar
- 20 ml salt
- 5 ml ground pepper
Procedure
-
Soak dried shrimps in lukewarm water until softened, drain.
Mix well the corn starch with
800 ml
of cold water, by hand.
-
Dice the sausages. Heat
30 ml
of oil in a pan and stir fry the
sausages and dried shrimps for about 7 mins. Add the soy sauce,
cooking wine, and
2.5 ml
sugar. Stir fry for 1 more minute, remove from heat, and set aside.
-
In a large stock pot, heat up
60 ml
of oil, the chicken broth,
100 ml
of water,
15 ml
sugar, salt, and ground pepper.
Add the grated turnip and mix well. Cook, covered, over high heat for about
15 minutes.
-
Grease four
20-cm
round cake pans with some shortening.
-
Add sausages to the cooked turnip mixture and mix well. Then add the
cornstarch mixture and stir quickly over low heat until it
looks transparent, about 7 mins.
-
Place cake mixture in greased pans, and steam over high heat
for 1 hour and 20 mins.
-
Let the cakes cool completely before cutting. Cooled cakes
can be easily taken out of pans upside down. Turnip cakes taste better
when served warm and topped with soy sauce and a little bit of
chili sauce. Or they can be cut up into thin slices and
pan fried slightly with oil before serving.
Notes
If you don't have a steamer, a 16 quart stock pot can be a very good
steamer. Any casseroles that can fit in your steamer can be used instead
of cake pans.
Cantonese sausages are usually made with pork cubes. They are made by
dehydrating the sausages with cold air and are usually available in the
winter time. The diameter is about the same as American breakfast sausages but
is about 5 to 6 inches long. The sausages have to be cut into very fine
cubes so that they mix well with the turnips.
The cake tastes good partly because of the flavor of the sausages. I have
never tried anything else. But I think bacon bits might be able to mix well
with the turnip mixture. Of course, the cake will taste different with bacon
bits.
Rating
Difficulty:
moderate.
Time:
1 hour preparation, 2 hours cooking and cooling.
Precision:
measure the ingredients.
Contributor
Infan Cheong
Computer Science Dept., U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA
cheong@uiucdcs.cs.uiuc.edu
Recipe last modified: 21 Feb 87
Original header
Path: decwrl!recipes
From: cheong@b.cs.uiuc.edu (Infan Cheong)
Newsgroups: alt.gourmand
Subject: RECIPE: Steamed turnip cake
Message-ID: <12138@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: 20 Nov 87 06:15:39 GMT
Sender: recipes@decwrl.DEC.COM
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Organization: U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA
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