KO EN Chinese Appetizer⏱ 100 minEdit history

Lo Bak Go (Steamed Radish Cake, Chilled and Pan-Fried)

Name: Lo Bak Go (Steamed Radish Cake, Chilled and Pan-Fried)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 40 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 1 kg daikon; 250 g rice flour; 30 g cornflour; 1.5 tsp salt; 1 tsp sugar; 0.5 tsp white pepper; 100 g lap cheong (Chinese sausage); 30 g dried shrimp; 4 dried shiitake; 2 spring onions; 3 tbsp oil; 2 tbsp XO sauce or oyster sauce

A Cantonese dim sum cake of shredded daikon set with rice flour. The trick is that no water is added at all: daikon is about ninety per cent water by weight, and what comes out of it while it cooks is what hydrates the flour. So the ratio cannot be measured out of a jug — it has to be judged from how much liquid the radish gave up. Steamed, it then has to be chilled overnight before it will slice, and only then does frying give it a skin.

Steps

Soak the dried shrimp and shiitake in warm water for 20 minutes. Keep the soaking water.
⏲ 20 min
Fry the lap cheong, shrimp and mushrooms in a little oil until fragrant and set them aside.
⏲ 5 min
Put the shredded daikon in the same pan, cover, and cook 10-12 minutes. Add no water — the radish releases enough to sit in. It is ready when it turns translucent.
⏲ 12 min
Off the heat, look at how much liquid has collected. It is usually 400-500ml, and this is where the ratio is decided: short of that, top it up with the mushroom water; over it, spoon some off.
⏲ 5 min
Mix the rice flour, cornflour, salt, sugar and pepper and tip it into the hot radish and its liquid all at once, stirring fast. Mixing it hot partly gelatinises the starch into a thick batter. Stir the fried things through.
⏲ 5 min
Pour into an oiled tin, level the top, and steam 45-50 minutes over hard steam, until a skewer comes out clean (steaming).
⏲ 45 min
Cool it completely and then chill it overnight. Skip this and it crumbles under the knife.
⏲ 120 min
Cut 1.5cm slices and fry them in oil, 3-4 minutes a side, until browned. Do not keep turning them — moved before a skin forms, they stick.
⏲ 4 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Vegetarian: leave out the sausage and shrimp and increase the mushrooms — the Cantonese temple version.
Taiwanese: the radish is grated finer, giving a much softer, whiter cake, eaten with soy or garlic soy.
Fried with XO sauce: the sliced cake stir-fried hard with bean sprouts and chives, as in Hong Kong cha chaan tengs.
Taro cake (芋頭糕): the same method with taro instead of radish, and richer for it.
Straight from the steamer: many households eat it unfried, still steaming. Much softer that way.

Tips

No water is added. Daikon is about ninety per cent water by weight. Cooked covered, that water comes out and pools in the pan, and it is what hydrates the flour — so the ratio cannot be measured from a jug. You judge it from what the radish gave up, and radishes vary a great deal by season and variety.
Mix it hot. Tipping the flour into the hot radish and its liquid partly gelatinises the starch into a thick batter that does not settle in the steamer. Mixed cold, the radish sinks and the water rises.
Glutinous rice flour will not set. The setting comes from the amylose in non-glutinous rice — daifuku explains that number. Made with glutinous flour this is a sticky mass that cannot be sliced.
Chilling overnight is the same step as huiguorou's and a different mechanism. There it is fat setting that makes thin slices possible; here it is a starch gel setting. Same operation, different reason, and neither can be sliced hot.
Same material as cheung fun, opposite objective. Cheung fun spreads a rice flour liquid 1-2mm thin and steams it into a soft sheet; this sets a thick block to be sliced and fried. Thin gel or thick gel is the whole difference — dotori-muk and oyster omelette sit at other points on the same axis.
Do not keep turning it. The point of frying is a skin; moved before one forms, the slice sticks and breaks.
Use the mushroom and shrimp soaking water. Soaking sorts soaking liquids into discard and keep, and this is firmly a keep — it is what you top the radish liquid up with.
It is a New Year cake. In Cantonese go (糕, cake) sounds like gou (高, high), so it is made for the lunar new year.