Lo Pak Ko - Radish Cake

I do realise that in the past weeks my blog has been bombarded by bento-related posts. I've got a bento fever, I am very aware of this, but I just can't help it. It is simply so addictive making cute characters out of food :). But I have always been rather artsy and I like to express myself and channel my feelings through creating something 'nice', since I have never been that good at words, especially orally. My dream when I was younger was to be an author, but growing up with two languages and now three has been a rather confusing journey and I sometimes think that I cannot speak any of the three languages perfectly. My husband thinks I am crazy because I often tell him that my English is getting worse by the day because now I live in Germany. Maybe it's the perfectionist in me, I just can't bear to make mistakes. Maybe I need to be more positive and think that at least I can speak all three languages fluently...;).

Anyway, today's post is about fried radish cake. Even though I love making bento meals so much, from time to time I still want to post some recipes which I like.

Radish Cake or Lo Pak Ko in Cantonese is very commonly served in yum cha restaurants. Compared to the other dim sum delicacies, such as har gao, shao mai or chee cheong fun, radish cake is quite easy to make at home. As long as you have a food processor, making this cake is really just a piece of cake ;). I used to grate the radish manually in the past and grating a whole radish with a grater does take quite some time and energy to do. Fortunately yesterday I tried the easier method and simply used a food processor to shred the radish. Tastewise I don't notice any difference, grating the radish manually IMHO doesn't make the radish cake taste in any way more superior.

Ingredients

• 1 medium daikon radish
• 1 tablespoon oil
  
• 2 - 3 chopped Chinese sausages
• 5 - 6 Shiitake mushrooms, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1 tablespoon fried onion
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon 5-spice powder
  
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
  
• Salt, pepper and sugar to taste
• 250 grams rice flour
• 50 grams tapioca flour
• 500 milliliter water

Instructions

• Peel the daikon radish and cut into cubes. Shred the radish cubes in a food processor with 100 milliliter of water. Set aside.
• Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a wok. Stir fry sausages, mushrooms and green onions. Add fish sauce, oyster sauce, 5 spice powder, fried onion, salt, pepper and sugar and keep stirring until fragrant.
  
• Add shredded radish and cook for 5 minutes.
• Mix rice flour, tapioca flour and 400 millilitre water in a bowl.
• Pour the rice/tapioca flour mixture into the wok, cook for 1 minute.
• Grease a cake pan. Pour the radish cake mixture into it. Steam for app. 40 minutes.
• When cold, refrigerate overnight. This will make the cake easier to cut.

Steamed radish cake





Slice the cake and you can directly eat it, but I prefer to pan-fry my radish cake. It tastes much better so.

Serve your fried radish cake with fried onion, chopped scallions and chili sauce.