Fried Carrot/ Turnip Cake

I love carrot cake! I'm not sure about you all, but most of the time when I go to the hawker center, I'll order a plate of dark soy sauce fried carrot cake. Something about the sweet and savory dark soy sauce taste mixed with the soft carrot cake and fried eggs, so yummy. ;) BTW, I realize that the fried carrot cake in Malaysia is pretty different from Singapore. In Malaysia, they add bean sprouts to it, perhaps for more texture and crunch? Well, maybe I grew up eating the Singapore fried carrot cake, so I much prefer the Singapore style fried carrot cake (AKA Char Kway). So today I took up the challenge of making carrot cake from scratch and of course fried some later.It's actually quite easy to make carrot cake once you know how. The recipe I used was from one of cookbook my sister gave me for Xmas. Title "Singapore Hawker Food" by Jimmy Chua. Below is a picture of the book. I made some slight changes to the recipe to suit my personal taste, below is my version:

Ingredients for Carrot/Turnip Cake:
350g shredded turnip (white radish)
5 tbsp cooking oil
½ tbsp chopped garlic
2 Chinese sausage, cut into small cubes
1/3 cup dried shrimp
5 dried mushroom, soaked till soft and diced small
Seasoning
600ml water
1½ tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
pinch of ground white pepper
1 tbsp of chicken seasoning granule
Thickening Glaze:
500ml water
350g rice flour
25g Caltrop flour
* Mix well till blended

Method:

• Heat up wok with cooking oil. Add garlic, Chinese sausage, dried shrimp and dried mushroom and stir fry until fragrant.
• Add shredded turnip and stir fry. Add seasoning ingredients and stir well till well blended.
• Bring to a boil and add thickening glaze. Lower heat and stir constantly as mixture will gradually thicken. Add a little more water if needed. (I added about 50 to 80ml more of water)
• Pour the batter into prepared pan (8 X 8 X 2 inch) and steam for 45 minutes or till it's firm to the touch.

Once the carrot cake has cooled down, cut it into chunks and assemble the following ingredients for frying.

Ingredients for Fried Carrot/Turnip Cake:

200g carrot cake, cut into chunks
½ tbsp chopped garlic
1 tbsp preserved dried radish (AKA "Chai Po" in hokkien)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp Hoisin Sauce
1 tbsp sweet dark soy sauce
Spring onions, sliced

Method:

• Heat non-stick frying pan with 2 tbsp of cooking oil. Add chopped garlic and preserved dried radish and stir fry till fragrant.
• Add carrot cake chunks and fish sauce. Stir fry for awhile. Move the carrot cake chunks aside and add a bit more cooking oil and proceed to add eggs and stir fry till cooked.
  
• Turn off the heat. Add Hoisin sauce and sweet dark soy sauce and stir well. Dish up and garnish with spring onion. Serve hot.

It's so good with a cup of "teh-si"(chinese milk tea). Once you get this mastered, you pretty much can enjoy Char Kway @ home anytime you want and not having to drive down and queue up to purcahse a packet from your favorite hawker. Have fun trying out and let me know how it work out for you. ;) Enjoy!