Make this treat with daikon radishes for the Lunar New Year! Eat your vegetables while having fun in this savoury analogue to carrot cake and banana bread.

Time: 5/5
Get started the night before to give time for your dried goods to rehydrate

Effort: 3/5
… that is, if you get it right the first time. Pretty much smooth sailing after the radish is grated.

Savoury cake?

Happy Chinese New Year! Or Lunar New Year, if you prefer. This is a time for extended family to come together. There’s a lot of people coming and going from the house, especially the home of the reigning patriarch of the family group where the people gather. And all these people are going to be hungry.

Like many festivals, CNY has its own pantheon of foods to mark the occasion. Since the host is going to be busy with all the guests, many of the foods are made ahead and brought out as needed. Think sweet and chewy year-cake (nin-go, or nian-gao), glutinous rice dumplings (湯圓; tong yuen, or tang yuan), or deep fried dumplings with a crushed peanut filling (油角; yau gok, or you jiao). Like always, the folks over at Woks of Life have a wonderful catalog for the occasion.

However, I’ve always prefered savoury over sweet. So while the confectionery and sweets never commanded my attention, the radish cake always catches my eye.

Cake is perhaps a bit of a misnomer. Radish cake resembles banana bread or carrot cake in that it’s a vegetative substance bound together with a small amount of flour, although of course it’s savoury instead of sweet. It’s also steamed instead of baked, and there aren’t any eggs or butter involved.

Of course, it’s hard to talk about traditional recipes without bringing in my grandmother’s expertise, accumulated over her decades-long tenure as the resident home cook. Oh, how the grandma series has grown! First the zongzi rice dumplings, then home-made Umeshu plum liquor, and now this. 

Most things are better when made at home and with love, but every now and then there’s a role for empiricism. So here’s how my grandma makes radish cake for Chinese New Year, plus my attempt to quantify the recipe – a SWR first!

Equipment check

Radish cake is cooked by steaming it. For that, you’ll need a pretty big pan or wok with some height to it. It needs to be tall enough to fit the cake, plus extra headspace, as well as enough space underneath the cake that the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the steaming container. Of course, you’ll also need a lid that fits the pan or wok tightly to keep the steam in.

You’ll also need a rack or a stand, to keep the bottom of the container above the water level. This makes sure that the cake cooks from the gentle heat of the steam, and not from the more vigorous heat of boiling water. If you don’t have a dedicated steaming stand, a stainless steel cookie cutter or a similar implement can stand in as the spacer. Just make sure it won’t scratch the bottom of your pan.

As for the container itself, pick something that is heat-safe and oil it lightly to keep the cake from sticking. You can steam your radish cake in something made of ceramic or porcelain, or even glass. But it would cook much quicker if you use a stainless steel container, since metal conducts heat much better. Keep in mind that the cake will take on the shape of the steaming container, so choose your container accordingly.

Personally, I like to use disposable aluminium sheet trays. The aluminium conducts heat just as well as steel, and they’re nice and deep so I can get thick, wide slices of radish cake. It also comes with a lid so I can keep the rest of the cake in the fridge without having to transfer the cake into another vessel.

The containers that I don’t end up using can be repurposed for casseroles or banana bread. And since I make these sort of recipes so infrequently, wastage isn’t really a big issue.

Serving suggestions

Some people like to enjoy their radish cake right after they’re steamed, scooped out onto a plate and drizzle with some soy sauce. And those people are monsters.

Just kidding. But I will say that I much prefer to let radish cake cool down, then chill it in the fridge until it firms up. Whenever I want to eat, I cut thick slices off of it and brown them on both sides in some oil in a pan. Browning is flavour, and you also get delicious crispy bits this way.

I also like to season my radish cake very well and enjoy it plain. But that takes experience, and if you want to err on the side of caution that’s absolutely fine. A bit of soy sauce post-production will fix any issue with under seasoning, and you can also spice it up with the hot sauce of your choice (my mom likes hers with Tabasco!)

Making it vegetarian or vegan

While I make my radish cake with things like sausage and dried seafood, you can leave all the animal ingredients out and make it vegan. Keep the shiitake mushrooms, and still have plenty of umami. However, if you do so I recommend you add something like diced pickled radishes to add some crunch and chew to the radish cake.

Also, because this recipe uses corn starch and rice flour instead of wheat flour, it’s also incidentally gluten free!

Dramatis Personae

Will serve 3-4 for breakfast.

Daikon radish – about 900g

To be washed, peeled and shredded. We like to use the biggest holes of the box grater, so the pieces of radish retain some texture and you get more of a mouthfeel in the end product.

Starch mix – about 130g

Mix up a bowl of corn starch and rice flour in a 1:1 ratio and have it on hand. You’ll need to add this bit by bit to the radishes until the texture is right. I only found out afterwards that Grandma’s rule of thumb is roughly a quarter the weight of radish in starch, so it turns out I added quite a bit less starch than I needed.

But, the exact ratio depends on a lot of factors. The more firm you like your radish cake, the more starch you want. You also need more starch if you add more liquid to to it. So there’s no way I can give you an exact amount. This is Grandma cooking after all, you’ll have to go by feel and look. Good luck!

Chinese sausage – one, about 45g

Chinese sausage is much sweeter and firmer than sausages in European or American cuisine. I’ve used this ingredient before, when demonstrating how to make Clay Pot Rice. These get washed and diced up, to give the radish cake some bite and meatiness.

Dried goods

Time to raid the pantry! All of these umami boosters need to be washed, then soaked in fresh water overnight.

Dried shiitake mushrooms – about 20g

Snap the stems off before you wet them, and hang on to them. The stems are too tough to eat, but they will do a great job reinforcing broths and stocks with their savouriness. Once rehydrated, drain and cut the mushroom caps into a small dice.

Dried shrimp – about 20g

It’s totally okay to use the cheaper, smaller dried shrimp here. You want little bitty pieces of shrimp distributed throughout the radish cake, and if the pieces are too large you’d have to cut them up which defeats the purpose. Save the big dried shrimp for something else where their size can shine, like a Stir Fry Supreme.

Dried scallop – about 20g

Like the shrimp, it makes more sense to use the cheaper smaller scallops for better distribution of flavour. Unless you want to use big scallops for the flex, in which case all the more power to you.

Once rehydrated and softened, pinch the scallops so they break up a bit but not so much that they fall completely apart.

The soaking water

A powerhouse of an ingredient in its own right! Wash the dried goods well before you soak to get rid of the dirt and grit. A lot of the umami from the dried goods have been leeched out into the water, and it makes no sense to throw all that perfectly good flavour away.

Seasoning

Salt, white pepper and chicken bouillon powder. The bouillon powder is great for depth of flavour, and the MSG in it doesn’t hurt. My grandma raised two generations of college-goers on MSG so don’t worry about it.

Executive summary

1. The day before, prepare the dried goods. Give them a rinse, and soak overnight in the fridge.
2. On the day of, wash and cut up the Chinese sausage as well as the dried goods. Grate all of the daikon radish. Ready your seasonings and starch mix.
3. Heat up a nonstick wok or skillet with some oil. Stir fry dried goods and Chinese sausage until fragrant.
4. Add all of the Daikon radish and give it a stir until everything is well distributed.
5. Add the soaking water and the seasoning, stir again, and cover the pan. Gently simmer until the radish is softened.
6. Scatter the starch mixture over the contents of the pan and stir it in bit by bit. Stop when it’s as thick as banana bread batter.
7. Lightly oil the insides of your steaming container and scoop in the radish cake batter. Steam on high heat for 15-20 minutes, according to thickness, or until an inserted chopstick comes out clean.
8. Allow the radish cake to cool down to room temperature, then keep it refrigerated in a sealed container until ready to serve. Cut into thick slices, brown on both sides in a pan with some oil and enjoy.

Play by Play

I’d say grating the radish is the toughest part of this operation, physically speaking. Watch your fingers!

Get everything together. Sausage rinsed and diced, dried goods diced, starches measured out, everything else on hand.

There’s plenty of oil in the sausage if you let it render out on low heat.

Turn the heat up and stir fry dried goods until fragrant, using the sausage oil. Add a bit more oil if you think it needs it.

Radish and seasonings in, then give it a stir and let the radish wilt a bit.

Keeping the heat on, add the dried goods soaking water. and sprinkle in the starch mixture bit by bit until the radish soup thickens into a batter. A more patient cook will do this with a sieve, but I can’t be bothered.

Is this thick enough? Let’s find out …

The insides of the foil pan has been oiled. Scoop the batter in, give the pan a rinse and a wipe, then set up a steamer rack above boiling water. Cake in, lid on, let it steam.

… aaand it was still super soupy after 20 minutes. The chopstick was supposed to come out clean, but hearing it make a wet sucking sound going in made me realise that I needed much, much more of the starch mix.

Never mind, we’ll fix it in post. I dumped the batter out into a bowl and spatulated some more starch mixture into it.

Steamed for another 10 minutes, and this time it seems about right. Chopstick comes out clean, and it isn’t oozing juice. Keep in mind that the radish cake will firm up a lot in the fridge.

Here we are the next morning, although it could be several weeks later. I’m not above just digging chunks out of the foil pan with the spatula, but let’s make nice flat pieces for the pictures.

Let’s brown the radish cake in some oil. Unfortunately, my nonstick pan is on it’s last legs and the brown didn’t want to stay on the cake. Nevertheless, it’s gonna be g

Breakfast is served! Sprinkle with a bit of scallion greens for colour, and dig in.

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