Conquering Carrot Cake

Whenever my parents make carrot (radish really) cake (chye tow kueh, or CTK for short) (or yam cake/kueh), they tend to do so post-dinner: it would be 9, or 10pm when I will start hearing the flurry in the kitchen - the clanging of pans, the sound of the stove fired alive - and then I would wonder (in exasperation, even) why wouldn't they just kick back, relax, and watch TV?

But the next morning when breakfast served, any doubt from the night before was silenced, as my sisters and I would inevitably ask for seconds and thirds of the fried cake, and is there any more so I can bring to work for lunch, too?

In Singapore, CTK can be easily bought at any hawker centre or food court for less than SGD 4 - so cheap, which naturally deters anyone from making the effort to try their own DIY version. (In fact the same can be said of most Singaporean street food - delicious cuisine that has the seemingly incredulous ability to marry complex elements with low prices.) Thankfully for me then, that I was able to enjoy both the homemade and outside versions during my days back in Singapore.

Taking an eight hours' flight brings you to Abu Dhabi, a place where all the money in the world will not buy you a plate - with the exception of a frozen CTK that took the same flight perhaps. Since learning that CTK is Kyle's favorite Singaporean hawker dish, I had felt tempted to try, which will serve not just to cement my status as the best wife ever (lol) but to try my hand at something my parents make but I for some reason did not feel urged to learn. And of course, to try to use some of the preserved radish in the Asian Ingredients Pack from Mama Lee.

And so over the days after we got back from our holidays, I steadily added radish and rice flour to our pantry, read pretty much every recipe online about the topic (there aren't that many) and mentally rehearsed all the steps. With the ingredients in place, I felt raring to go - but...

Roadblock #1: Every recipe was rather precise about the amounts of ingredients used, down to the last ml or gram, and here we did not have a kitchen scale yet. (We were supposed to get one from my folks)

I debated internally with myself about whether I should go ahead by agaration (Singlish 101: from the root word "agak", to guess in Malay - a process of doing something not by measured procedures but just 'feeling' it) or just give up and make soup with the radish. (the rice flour could wait.) A couple of days went by and with a new found philosophy I recently developed with regards to cooking - there's not much to lose, at the worst I'll just fail, I decided to go ahead (some time around 9pm, no less, @parents are you reading this?)

Who was the one who said no more ambitious recipes, huh?

Having decided that I should just agak my way through, I went for Food Made With Love's recipe that seemed to be more relaxed than the others in terms of precision. After all, I was going to be even more imprecise than imprecision, as I would not be able to measure out x grams of radish nor y grams of flour. From memory of seeing my parents work I had some vague idea about how the texture *should* be, so, viva agaration! I was determined.

Roadblock #2: We have no proper steamer to steam the cake.

Returning to the internet I turned to Lifehacker & co to find a way to "hack" a steamer using our existing tools. Many were not helpful for my purpose as they did not have a "tray" of cake to steam, nor do I blame them, usually people who would make something like this would be sane enough to procure the proper tools before proceeding.

Tinkering with the various combinations of cooking utensils I came up with something, but due to its inherent flaws, heat transfer took the longest time; due to my zero experience I couldn't even judge if the radish was cooked. All the while I was convinced I was mad to even try to do this.

Hacking it: A saucepan stacked on a pot balanced by the Ordning cutlery stand from IKEA.

Roadblock #3: While the cake steamed, I realized the recipes call for salted preserved radish, but what we have is the sweet version.

Horror of all horrors! To think the pack of preserved radish was one of the chief reasons to make CTK! And what we have is actually wrong!

Readers may note that by then I had reached the point of no return so the time to fix the situation will be when I actually fry it, which can be tweaked by adjusting the seasoning. Again agaration. Sums up my culinary journey, and my favorite Singlish word ever.

Moving along...

After steaming the cake, I thought it looked rather dry than it should be and again, I was unsure if it was fully cooked. In the end I was just too tired to watch the fire any longer and so killed the stove.

It was not ready to be eaten yet, as it needs to be chilled overnight for the cake to set.

It obviously did not improve its appearance during its sleepover in the fridge lol.
(I ate the missing edge of the circle for lunch.)

Day 2: Making it Edible is Actually the Easy Part

It was meant to be dinner but I was looking forward to the frying so much that I decided to "experiment" the frying for my own lunch hahaha. I had a sneaking feeling that the cake was going to be bland since I barely salted it, also, some chef-backed recipes suggested cooking the radish in stock which I didn't; so I piled on the flavor generously during the frying to make up for it. It did work somewhat, in the end we enjoyed the cake very much and me twice (heh). 

The next time I try this again, I swear the cake will be bursting with flavor! :D

A sprinkle of scallion would have completed the picture, but I didn't have any (and I don't like it..)

A Word from the Customer Husband

Getting Kyle to write something is like extracting water from the Arabian desert, but I managed to force a commentary out of him at this occasion :p

On a wind gentle sun bright afternoon… I received a whatsapp image of a fried something something from Kate. Could not really make out what it was really, but at first glance, I thought it was some really thick and juicy fried calamari. Turned out that dish was the carrot cake for dinner! She was just testing and trying it out that afternoon, having steamed a chunky looking white paste the night before. So truth be told, the carrot cake is really quite amazing. Part of the amazement was of course the fact that she whipped this out of nowhere, and being the glad guinea pig I was (it was the umpteenth time I’ve been the lab rat, but God blessed me with this wife that can follow/innovate internet recipes really well), the leap of ‘fork’ into the mouth was plain-vanilla heaven. I mean not to compare this with the Zion Rd hawker center carrot cake uncle, but for a homemade carrot cake, without the use of MSG, a wok-less steamer-less environment… loved it.

This desert (me) just had to give some water to the wife. I need my continual dose of random cuisinal experiments :)