Turnip Cake with Brown Rice Puree 蘿蔔糕 |沒有在來米粉 自製糙米糊|

Hi there! Today I wanna share my copycat turnip cake made from scratch with brown rice. I went to Ranch 99 earlier this week and brought home a chubby daikon. I was going to make daikon & rib soup but somehow had cravings for turnip cake. 

Turnip cake is a traditional dim sum dish, and a common savory snack from childhood. 

Traditionally, this yummy dish is made with a rice puree (米糊) with special rice powder (or rice flour? I'm not very sure what it's called in English). 在來米粉 is the Chinese name for this special rice powder. Well, I didn't have the special rice powder on hand, so...I decided to give regular brown rice a try.

Yes, I improvised by making my own rice puree with brown rice!

 

To make the Rice Puree

For my "experimental rice puree," I added 3 cups of uncooked brown rice (washed & soaked for 2 hours) and about half of that Ninja cup of water into the blender. 

Since it's my first time experimenting with it, I eyeballed the grain and stopped the blender when it began to look like rice milk. I think it was about 15 seconds. It came out very liquidy at first.

To make Daikon & Rice Paste (or is it still puree?)

After I finished pureeing the rice, I left the liquidy puree in the cup to set for a bit. Meanwhile, I heated a wok with about a tablespoon of vegetable oil and cooked shredded daikon (about 1.3 lbs) until they became translucent. Sprinkled white pepper powder. Then, all that rice puree was poured into the wok and it started to thicken over time. I used a wooden spatula to fold the paste continuously for about 10 minutes. 

  

Steaming Time

I lined my bamboo steamer with a sheet of parchment paper. Placed the steamer inside a wok filled with water (I didn't measure how much water I put in, but I added to about half of the height of the steamer). Then, I had W help me by holding the tips of the parchment paper while I poured down the daikon & rice paste into the steamer. Used the same wooden spatula to flatten the surface of the paste. Folded the parchment paper so they covered the paste. 

Put on that steamer lid, and then the wok lid. Steamed on high for 40 minutes. Added about a glass of water mid-way.

I've read that many people have had success with lining the steamer with a linen steamer cloth. It's the same kind of cloth some restaurants use to steam buns and dim sums. I don't have a steamer cloth so I just used parchment paper.

Let it chill

After 40 minutes of steaming, it still looked a bit "soft," so I let it chill in the steamer for about 15 minutes. This did help the top to firm up a little. At this point, I consider this 50% turnip cake 😎. Then, I moved the copycat turnip cake (or 50% copycat turnip cake) to another container. 

To move the turnip cake, I held the parchment paper by its tips so there's minimal disturbance to the shape. Let it chill for about an hour on the counter then I covered it with a lid and moved it to the fridge to chill overnight. This whole time, I kept the parchment paper on the turnip cake to lock in moisture. So it went like this: turnip cake wrapped inside the parchment paper, then the whole thing was placed in a covered container.

Experiment 1.1

The next day, I took it out and placed the half copycat turnip cake on a cutting board to check for its "firmness." Personally, I prefer it more firm. I found it still a bit "too soft" to my liking. So I decided to only use half and save the other half for the next day's experiment 😆. My thought was "maybe it'll firm up even more if I let it chill inside the fridge for 1 more night."

To cut the turnip cake, I greased the knife before cutting up the cake. This helps with preventing the turnip cake from getting smudged when cutting. Most turnip cakes are in the shape of a rectangle but really, they're good in any shape, squares, circles, or triangles...😄

 

Pan fry it

I pan-fried them with vegetable oil. Browned both sides, sometimes 3 sides. Served with sweet chili sauce.

One thing I noticed was...these were easy to stick to the pan. More oil helped but only to a certain degree. They still stuck so easily. They tasted VERY SIMILAR to the turnip cakes from childhood memories. The texture is more "gooey," which I suspect is because I used brown rice puree instead of using the special rice powder. I'm not sure if this was also the reason for how easy they were to stick to the pan. 

So in conclusion of this experiment, my homemade turnip cake tasted good ✌, though stuck much easier and nastier than the store-bought ones 😕

 

Experiment 1.2

The next day, I took out the other half of the un-fried turnip cake to give it another try. The texture was firmer the next day, which gave me hope! I also cut them into smaller cubes.

I used the same pan to pan-fry the cubed turnip cakes. Also added more vegetable oil to the point I felt like it was lowkey deep-frying, not pan-frying 😝. But, hey, it kinda worked. Also, they didn't stick so much! In conclusion, having it chilled over 2 nights made the turnip cake slightly firmer which was what I had hoped for. Experiment 1.2 turned out better than 1.1!

Ingredients:

1 daikon, shredded (mine was about 1.3lbs)

brown rice, uncooked (3 cups, washed)

water (my guestimate is around 1 cup, for making the rice puree)

water (up to about half of the steamer, for steaming, add more as needed)