White Turnip Cake

White Turnip Cake (蘿蔔糕) has always been one of the plates I want to master, but has eluded me for a long, long time. My mom makes the best of them -- just a good ol' classic of white turnip with 臘腸, 冬菇, 瑤柱. I dare say, no others from relatives/friends' homemade can beat hers, and please, don't even insult hers by comparing with those overly-starchy-MSGed-overpriced-mess that Chinese restaurants try to upsell you around Chinese New Year that they claim to be White Turnip Cakes.

The problem? White Turnip Cake ain't easy to make! First, it is A LOT of work. Chopping the ingredients and shredding the turnip is just super labour intensive. Then, there are different recipes with variations, but all basically calls for judgement by experience -- how much moisture in the dough, how thoroughly cooked should the ingredients be before steaming -- experience which I have, say, as much as gardening (which is practically none, but that's another topic). On top of that, there is the season factor. White turnips are not necessarily in good quality year around, but only around winter time.

And then there is the failed experience factor. Last time Cindy and I tried it a few years ago (way back when we were still in Kitchener), we had it completely fallen apart, literally. After all the hard work, the finished product has little resemblance of a turnip cake in colour, texture and taste. Worse yet, the glass container that contains it apparently cannot take high heat and shattered while steaming.

Since, I have probably asked my mom about recipe, tricks, tips of buying turnip, a few times from time to time. Cindy also found a recipe online with video showing how it's made, and that gave us some guidance as well as a confidence boost. Redemption was supposed to be at this past Chinese New Year -- I even bought five big turnips on sale -- but only to find myself unable to summon the time, effort and all the ingredients to get it done. It was not meant to be.

But about a couple of weeks ago, the white turnip was on sale again during grocery shopping and looked great! So off we go, and Cindy even remembered to buy the rice flour (粘米粉) and gluten-free flour (澄麵) along with it.

I still had to find time to do it... which took me a week to find that time. LOL. But I did this time around. We decided to follow mostly on the video recipe (instead of my mom's word-of-mouth recipe). Here's our ingredients:

• 3 white turnips. Turns out to be 5 lbs. Peel, and then shred with the largest holes of the shredder.


• about a dozen small 冬菇. Finely chopped, to about 1 cup.


• 6 (not really full-sized) Chinese sausage. Steamed. Finely chopped, to about 2 cups.


• 2 cloves of 瑤柱, steamed, then disassembled and then chopped. Then we added 5 more. More on this explained later.


• ginger; just a piece or two


• 1 package minus 1 cup of rice flour (I don't know how much that is! lol)


• 1 cup of gluten-free flour


• white pepper, lots


• salt


• oyster sauce, maybe 5 tablespoons?

Makes 2 cakes, in 8-inch (I think...) aluminum containers.

Spent Sunday after dinner to do the prep work, slicing and dicing the 冬菇, steaming and then dicing the Chinese sausage and 瑤柱 to very fine pieces for perfection, in the hopes that they were small enough for Isaac to join our cake eating. Monday was then wasted, but Tuesday marks the actual cooking.

Tuesday's work started after dinner clean-up, around 10:30pm, peeling and shredding the turnips. Also went to mom's house to borrow steamer and took the one-use aluminum containers. Frustrated at the pace and almost panicking, asked Cindy to "kindly" join the "fun" (translation: yelling at her for help). Comparing at the size of ingredients and also referencing the video recipe, we decided to add some more 瑤柱.

Finally, we are ready to cook. The turnip shreds are put into wok (with nothing, no oil) over medium heat, then add ginger and slowly turning them over and over. It begins to become translucent as well as giving up its liquid. Then remove ginger, remove heat, and add salt, lots of pepper and oyster sauce. Then, in a separate pan/pot, stir fry the sausage, and the 冬菇. That night, the inevitable culinary mishap happened here when I left the heat on, and for absolutely no reason at all, a CD package at the top of fridge fell off the ground and shattered. I attended the freak accident and investigate the damage, only to find my sausages burned upon return to stove. Pretty frustrating to pick out the unsalvagable pieces that were so tiny, only because I spent the whole night previously cutting them meticulously.

Anyhow, the mixture was added to the turnip, as well as the 瑤柱 along with its water saved at steaming. Finally, the mixing process can begin. The flour mix is sieved through, like baking, to the turnip mixture, while mixing them all up at the wok. On the moisture, there was a little bit of liquid at the bottom of the wok when everything was done.

The mixture was placed and packed into the round containers, and steam for 40 minutes. I was using multi-rack steamer so I have to switch top-bottom levels at 20-minute mark to ensure even distribution of steaming on both cakes. All that work and mishap brought both of us past 1am upon completion. At that point, I was looking forward to the results as they looked promising, but was also just glad that it was over.

The morning after, mother-in-law pan-fried a portion for us for breakfast. I was pleasantly surprised at the consistency of the cake; the turnip-to-flour mixture was just right, and the moisture looked in range. Considering where we were last time we made this cake, which was a complete disaster, that was definitely above expectations. But the biggest drawback was the taste. It was too salty, particularly the 瑤柱 overpowered the cake. The oyster sauce, confirming my initial suspicion, was completely unnecessary as it drove the taste into the wrong direction.

We gladly gave away some of the cakes to both of our parents' families, both coming back with pretty good compliments. I discussed with my mom on the recipe, and she said she wouldn't use the 瑤柱 leftover water into the mixture because, really, that's just MSG (she suspected it even before I brought it up, that's mad skills). She told me beforehand too, that she doesn't use gluten-free flour (the main ingredient for making Har Gou wraps, I'm told), or even corn starch, because she doesn't like the pretend-to-be-smooth texture of the resulting cake. Something which I now agree after this "little" experiment.

Lessons learned / Tips:

• When making White Turnip Cake, less is more. Dont' overload on toppings or extra flavours. Let the turnip goodness be the front and centre of the dish, complimented by the preserved "wintery" taste of sausage and 冬菇. Be gentle with saltiness too. You can always dip soy sauce with the finished product.


• In choosing turnip, try to choose ones that are heavy, and shorter and rounder in shape.


• When cooking turnip shreds, don't overcook. It's time to stop when it becomes translucent. Overcooking, I suspect, causes the dish to turn brown, and loses that tangy edge of turnips.


• Insert chopstick to test for readiness after steaming; it's ready if it does not stick. Also at that time, it is fine to see liquid on the cake. The cake will absorb that moisture upon cooling.


• Never attempt to do everything in one day. Split prep-work and cooking into separate days to avoid a kitchen meltdown.