Usu­al­ly I’d be hav­ing a reg­u­lar work day over Lunar New Year, but this year it falls on a Sat­ur­day! So I thought I’d cel­e­brate by try­ing out a rice cook­er turnip cake recipe :D

I remem­ber my Hak­ka grand­moth­er mak­ing lots and lots of turnip cakes in prepa­ra­tion for new year. Turnip cake is also Mike’s favourite at dim sum. So even though I’m not so good with cook­ing, I thought I’d give it a try. And it actu­al­ly turned out quite well, and tast­ed like turnip cake! The recipe I found is all in Chi­nese, but if you can’t read Chi­nese but are inter­est­ed in mak­ing turnip cake with a rice cook­er, here’s what I did :D 

The main ingre­di­ents are: (they can usu­al­ly be pur­chased at Asian gro­cery stores)

400g daikon radish (I don’t have a scale so I don’t know how much I used for sure, but used one aver­age size daikon radish)
80g Chi­nese sausage (I used one)
80g pre­served meat (?) (not sure what it is in Eng­lish, did­n’t use)
3 shi­itake mush­rooms (soaked for a few hours to rehydrate)
1 tbsp dried shrimps (soaked for a few hours to rehy­drate. I prob­a­bly used 3 tbsp, as pic­tured. Did­n’t mea­sure. 1 tbsp of shrimps just seems too few. I like shrimps.)
1 cup of rice flour (I used about 1/4 cup more because it looked like I had more daikon than called for)
1 cup of water (I used about 1/4 cup more, and used the liq­uid cre­at­ed from shred­ding the daikon, as well as the soak­ing water from the mush­rooms, for flavour) 
I also used a small amount of cilantro, chopped

Sea­son­ing for the daikon:
1 tsp chick­en instant stock mix
1/8 tsp sug­ar (did­n’t mea­sure, used a pinch)
1/8 tsp salt (same as above)
a bit of white pepper

Sea­son­ing for mushrooms/shrimps/sausage:
1/8 tsp soy sauce (a few drops)
1/8 tsp sug­ar (a pinch)
1/8 tsp rice wine (did­n’t use, because I don’t have rice wine)

1) Chop mush­rooms into thin strips. Rough­ly chop shrimps.

2) Chop Chi­nese sausage into small bits

3) Mix mush­rooms, shrimps and sausage togeth­er with sea­son­ing (the soy sauce, sug­ar and rice wine)

4) Heat wok (I used a fry­ing pan because I don’t have a wok), quick fry mush­rooms, shrimps and sausage with 1 tbsp of oil. Put in a dish and set aside.

5) Peel and shred daikon. Drain and save the liq­uid in a bowl, add water (I use the water from the mush­room soak, fil­tered with a cof­fee fil­ter) to make 1 cup. In a bowl mix this liq­uid with rice flour. Set aside.

6) Heat wok (I used a large fry­ing pan), quick fry the shred­ded daikon with the daikon sea­son­ing and 1/2 tbsp of oil. Turn down heat and cov­er, cook for a few min­utes until soft. Mix in the mushrooms/shrimps/sausage and cilantro. Turn off heat. Mix in the rice flower mix­ture quickly.

7) Grease rice cook­er, pour mix­ture into rice cook­er. Cook in rice cook­er on white rice setting.

It looked like I had enough to make 2 cakes so I made an extra small one on the steam­ing rack in the rice cook­er, on a greased tin plate. When the rice cook­er fin­ished cook­ing for the first time, the small turnip cake did­n’t look cooked, and I was­n’t sure about the larg­er one in the rice cook­er, so I cooked it again on the “quick steam” set­ting. After that the large one looked done (has a slight translu­cent qual­i­ty), but the top one still looked uncooked (opaque like rice pud­ding), so I steamed it the old school way, until it looked cooked.

Here’s the large one cooked in the rice cook­er. I’m quite proud of how it turned out! :D

The large one is for a fam­i­ly gath­er­ing tomor­row. The small one we cut up, pan fried and ate :)

It’s stick­i­er than it’s sup­posed to, I think I used too much daikon, and did­n’t drain it enough (I think one is sup­posed to press the shred­ded daikon to get all the liq­uid out). But it tast­ed like turnip cake! Which is a Chi­nese New Year mir­a­cle giv­en my culi­nary skills, or our rice cook­er is mag­i­cal :D

May the new year bring you good health, much suc­cess and lots of happiness!