Lo Bak Go (Chinese Turnip Cake)

We have moved our site to http://chowtimes.com

The only unsinkable ship is friendship. ~ Jeff Sczpanski

Polly came over and helped me make Lo Bak Go. I am glad she came over because it's a lot of work making this. I learned this from a previous Community Kitchen class.

Lo bak go (蘿蔔糕 lo bak go, 萝卜糕 luóbogāo) are savory cakes are made from grated daikon radishes. The daikons are mixed with bits of dried shrimp and chinese sausages that are steamed and then cut into slices and pan-fried. Chinese people normally make Lo Bak Go in the Chinese New Year.

As the name implies, the main ingredient is the daikon radish, which is also known as chinese turnip (or lo bak). The rice flour and corn starch is used to hold the cake together. The other ingredients such as chinese sausage, mushrooms, shallots and dried shrimp are used for flavouring.

Here is how Polly and I make the dish:

We started off grating the daikon. It was easy with the food processor.

We then cooked the daikon with some water for 20 minutes. This will soften the daikon.

While waiting for the Daikon to cook, we chopped the flavouring ingredients into small pieces. This is really hard work. I am not sure if I should use the food processor for this because the ingredients are pretty hard.

We then fried the ingredients at the same time until they are fragrant. We forgot to add in the seasonings, like salt, pepper and sugar!!

We mixed the corn starch and rice flour in water before we pour it over the fried ingredients together with the cooked daikon.

We need to stir the mixture until it turns into paste. This is a difficult part because we need a lot of arm strength to stir through the thick mixture. After this, we steamed the mixture for one hour.

The lo bak go could be served warm or if you chose to freeze it, you need to fry it before serving. It is best eaten with sweet chilli sauce (lat jiu jeong) or sweet sauce (tim jeong).

We are bringing this dish to our little Chinese New Year gathering this weekend at Sabrina and Eric's new house. Thanks Polly for coming over today. Let me know how your kids like it.