Radish Cake or Lo Pak Ko can be easily found in wet markets and in dim sum shops. Those sold are usually very plan with just julienne radish and seasonings. A few sellers add some tiny pieces of char siew in their Lo Pak Ko. Usually when we make it ourselves, we will add ingredients like Chinese sausages, dried prawns, Shiitake mushrooms and dried scallops to greatly improve the flavour of the Lo Pak Ko.
The way of making Radish Cake is similar to that of making Yam Cake. The difference is that while we top up the Yam Cake with fried shallots, dried prawns, cut chilies and green onion, we will usually pan fry the Radish Cake.
Ingredients:
- 1 kg daikon
- 75 g dried prawns
- 3 pieces Shiitake mushrooms
- 5 pieces dried scallops
- 150 g rice flour
- 2 tbsp tapioca flour
- 1 cup of water (from soaked dried prawns, mushrooms and dried scallops)
- 3 tbsp cooking oil
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp pepper powder
Method:
- Wash dried prawns, mushroom and scallop. Soak them with clean water overnight to soften the dried prawns and scallops and to plump up the Shiitake mushrooms. (We will be using the water to mix with the flour later.)
- Remove skin of the daikon and julienne it. (You may use a grater to grate it length-wise about 2 inches long.)
- Chop up the dried prawns and Shiitake mushrooms.
- Shred the dried scallops
- Heat up wok with cooking oil.
- Saute the mushrooms, dried prawns and dried scallops till they are fragrant.
- Remove the sauteed ingredients from the wok.
- Add the julienne daikon to the same wok. Stir and let the daikon simmer till it is soft.
- Remove the daikon from the wok into a sieve. Press the daikon to remove the water from the daikon.
- Pour the daikon back into the wok.
- Add the sauteed ingredients to the daikon. Stir to combine them well. Then turn off the fire.
- Prepare a steamer with water. Boil the water.
- Weigh and sieve rice flour and tapioca flour into a bowl.
- Add the water to the flours and stir well until there are no lumps.
- Add salt, sugar and pepper to the flour mixture. Stir to combine.
- Pour the flour mixture into the wok with daikon and the sauteed ingredients. Stir to mix them up.
- Turn on the fire. Stir until the batter in the wok become drier.
- Grease a 7-inch pan.
- Pour the batter into the pan.
- Steam the batter for an hour over medium heat or until a wooden skewer poke into the centre of the pan comes out clean.
- Remove the pan from the steamer and let the Lo Pak Ko cool down completely before cutting.
- Cut the Lo Pak Ko into whatever shape that you desire.
- Heat up a non-stick pan.
- You may fry the Lo Pak Ko as it is or you may coat it with a thin layer of corn flour before frying it.
- Serve with chili sauce.