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| Fried carrot cake (chai tau kuih) with bean sprouts |
I couldn't resist the temptation, so I made carrot cake a few days ago. Making the cake itself is not difficult. It's made from grated daikon/radish, rice flour, water, tapioca starch and seasoned with salt, soy sauce, pepper and sesame oil. I also added a little alkaline water to improve the texture. This is steamed for about 40 minutes, and then cooled before cutting into cubes for frying.
I fried the carrot cake two ways: the white version and the black one. The black version has dark caramel soy sauce added to it, plus extra sugar for sweetness. I also used a little kecap manis as it has a sweeter flavour compared to regular dark soy sauce. No salt or soy/fish sauce is added to the dish when frying as the preserved radish (chai poh) is already salty. However, I did add a little fish sauce to the beaten egg mixture before pouring them over the carrot cake in the pan, just for a touch of seasoning.
I like my carrot cake cut up into tiny cubic pieces, covered with moist bits of egg. I don't particularly fancy chunks of egg in it, so I make sure that I mix the carrot cake around in the egg before it sets so that it coats all the pieces evenly. At this point, I also add a little of the dark soy sauce over the eggs so that they are slightly sweet and moist, before adding more sauce over everything else. To make the dish more substantial, I also tossed in a few seasoned prawns. The beansprouts are added towards the end along with the chopped spring onions. Yum yum....carrot cake is served!
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| Fried carrot cake with bean sprouts, shrimp and sweet black sauce |
