Chai Tow Kway (Fried "Carrot Cake")

Name: Chai Tow Kway (Fried "Carrot Cake")
Total time: 1 h 40 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Singaporean (Teochew)
Ingredients: 600 g Daikon (white radish), grated; 200 g Rice flour; 30 g Cornflour; 400 ml Water; 1 tsp Salt; 1/2 tsp White pepper; 4 tbsp Chai poh (preserved sweet radish); 4 cloves Garlic, chopped; 3 Eggs; 1 tbsp Light soy sauce; 2 tbsp Sweet dark soy sauce (kecap manis style); 1 tbsp Chilli paste (sambal); 4 tbsp Neutral oil; 3 Spring onion, sliced

Singapore's most misleadingly named dish: soft cubes of steamed white radish cake fried hard in a wok with preserved radish, garlic and egg until the edges are crusted — white with light soy, or black with sweet dark soy.

Fonte

Receita de Chinese-Singaporean hawker stalls · 🏺 Tradicional · Teochew, Hokkien and Cantonese stall cooking in Singapore's hawker centres and coffee shops

Singapore hawker dish · Teochew — An ownerless hawker dish, so no cook is credited. Honest note on the URL: English Wikipedia has no standalone 'Chai tow kway' article — that title redirects to 'Turnip cake', which is the page linked. It confirms the three things this recipe leans on: the dish is 'traditionally called carrot cake in Singapore, but has no relation to European carrot cake'; the vegetable is daikon, because in Singapore and Malaysia the English word 'carrot' was transferred to the daikon radish; and there are two variants — the white one fried on top of beaten egg with light soy and/or fish sauce, and the black one with sweet dark soya sauce and the egg mixed through. Quantities are this book's own home proportions.

Contexto na Wikipédia ↗

Veja como se faz · 3 vídeos

Spice N' Pans HOTPLATE SG60 NOM NOM NOM

⏱ 100 min🍽 4 porções🔥 430 kcal🇸🇬 Singapura🌶️

VegetarianoSem lactose

Modo de preparo

Cook the grated radish with 150 ml of the water in a covered pan over medium heat for 10 minutes, until it collapses and turns translucent. Do not drain it — that cloudy liquid is flavour.
Whisk the rice flour, cornflour, salt, pepper and remaining 250 ml water into a smooth batter, then pour it into the hot radish and stir hard. Within a minute it thickens into a heavy paste that pulls away from the pan.
💡 Keep stirring right through this. The bottom scorches in seconds once the starch takes.
Scrape the paste into an oiled shallow tin, smooth the top, and steam it for 45 minutes. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the surface is set and matte.
Cool it completely, then refrigerate at least 4 hours — overnight is better. Only then cut it into 2 cm cubes.
💡 This is the step people skip and then wonder why their carrot cake turned to mush in the wok. Warm cake has no structure. Chill it.
Get a wok or heavy pan very hot with 3 tablespoons of oil. Add the cubes in one layer and leave them alone for 3 minutes to brown, then turn and brown a second face. Push them to one side.
💡 Resist stirring. Every time you move them you interrupt the crust that is forming, and crust is the only reason to fry this at all.
Add the last spoon of oil, the garlic and the chai poh to the empty side and fry 30 seconds until fragrant. Stir in the chilli paste. For the WHITE version, pour the beaten egg over the whole pan, let it set undisturbed for 1 minute, then break it up with light soy and toss. For the BLACK version, toss the sweet dark soy through the cubes first, then add the egg and scramble it in.
Slide it onto a plate in one piece if you can, scatter the spring onion, and eat it straight away while the crust is still crisp.

💡 Dicas

There is no carrot in it. The name comes from 菜头 (chai tow), which is the white radish — in Singapore and Malaysia the English word 'carrot' got attached to the daikon, and the name stuck. It has nothing to do with European carrot cake.
White or black is a genuine dividing line here. White is savoury and eggy; black is sweeter and darker from the sweet dark soy. Order by colour at a stall — they will ask.
Written this way it is meat-free, but it is NOT tagged halal: hawker stalls almost always fry it in lard, and most also cook pork dishes on the same wok.
The radish cake keeps 4 days in the fridge and freezes well cut into cubes. Making it on a Sunday turns this into a ten-minute weekday breakfast.