Fried Carrot Cake

SINGAPORE

In the world I grew up in, carrot cake isn’t sweet and does not come with cream cheese frosting. It’s not even got carrots in it, but rather daikon radish, referred to as ‘white carrot’ in Chinese. My idea of carrot cake is more like a fat, messy broken omelette. Steamed white radish cakes are chopped and scrambled with eggs and salted preserved radish till crisp on the edges, then smeared with spicy sambal. A ‘black’ version of fried carrot cake is more popular across the borders in Malaysia – made with sweet dark soy sauce and usually less crispy. There’s also, of course, the Cantonese dim sum version of carrot cake – pan-fried slices of white radish cake dotted with little nuggets of shiitake mushroom and Chinese cured sausage (similar to pumpkin cake, see here). I may be biased, but my carrot cake needs neither colour nor sausage, and definitely no icing.

Serves 1–2

For the radish cakes (makes 2 portions)

• 100g fine rice flour
• 200g white radish (aka daikon or mooli), finely shredded
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt

For the fried cakes

• 3 tablespoons chopped salted preserved radish
• 4 tablespoons lard or groundnut oil
• 1 portion of radish cake (see above)
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1–2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 free-range eggs
• a dollop of sambal tumis belachan (see here)

1. I like to split this into a two-stage process, making the radish cakes the day before, and cutting up and frying the day after. I make more radish cakes than I need, to easily satisfy future cravings.
2. Put the rice flour and 150ml of room temperature water into a bowl and stir together. Add 150ml of boiling water to the shredded radish, and pour the water and blanched radish into the rice flour mixture.
3. Add the salt, and set the bowl over a pot of boiling water, stirring the mixture until it starts to thicken up into a smooth sticky paste. Pour into a greased shallow dish, then steam over a medium-high heat for about 20 minutes, or until cooked and kind of firm. (It firms up more as it cools.)
4. Cut into little cubes when it’s fully cool. Don’t worry about ragged edges; like roast potatoes, these are the bits that get irresistibly crispy. Meanwhile, soak the preserved radish in water for 5 minutes, then drain.
5. Melt half the lard or heat up half the oil in a frying pan. When the fat is hot, add the radish cakes and fry, pressing gently with your spatula, till crispy around the edges. Remove and set aside.
6. Add the rest of the lard to the pan and fry the garlic and preserved radish till fragrant, then return the radish cakes to the pan with a drizzle of fish sauce. Spread everything around the pan.
7. Beat the eggs with a little more fish sauce, and pour the mixture evenly over the radish cakes. Leave until the bottom is nicely browned before flipping over and browning on the other side. To make it easier on yourself, cut the ‘omelette’ roughly into smaller portions with the sharp edge of your spatula before flipping, hawker-style. It’s OK if it’s messy and crumbling at the edges.
8. To finish, smear the sambal tumis belachan chilli paste over and serve hot.