Daikon Cake

This is one of those dishes that my dad and I used to eat for lunch on Sundays after walking down the hill and back up. It's best served with my dad's soy-preserved chilis.

Ingredients:

3 lbs daikon

1 cup water

2 cups long grain rice flour

5 tbsp vegetable oil

4-6 dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated and finely chopped

1/4 cup dried shrimp, finely chopped and soaked in sherry (or Shaoxing)

2 lapchong, finely chopped

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp white pepper

1 tbsp finely chopped cilantro (to garnish)

1 tbsp finely chopped green onion (to garnish)

Tools:

1 cheese grater

1 steamer

1 bundt pan

1 large pot

1 pan

Peel up the daikon and put it through a cheese grater. Put the grated daikon into a pot with just enough water to cover it and simmer for 1 hour (so that it's not tough and stringy). Drain out the excess water from the pot, but leave enough in so that the shredded daikon is still moist. Slowly add in the rice flour until it looks like thick oatmeal. Then stir in the 2 tbsp of oil and set aside. Fry up the chopped mushrooms, lapchong, shrimp, and green onion and then stir it into the flour-daikon mix in the pot. Add in the salt, sugar, and white pepper and slop it all around until it's well mixed. Lube up a bundt pan with your choice of oil or spray-lube, then dump in the contents of the pot. Fire up the steamer and steam that sucker for about 1 hour. When it's done, let it sit until it's cool, or refrigerate it until it stands on its own (like, you know, a cake). When it's cooled, dump it out of the bundt pan and slice it up and shove it in the fridge.

When you're ready to eat them, the best way to serve them is to grab a bunch of slices, toss them into a pan with some oil, crack in an egg and some chopped salted radish and fry up that concoction until it's all golden brown. Then serve it up with white pepper and a generous splash of red chilis that have been soaking in soy sauce.