Turnip Cake Recipe from Nom Wah
From The Nom Wah Cookbook by Wilson Tang and Joshua David Stein.
Copyright 2020 Wilson Tang.
Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Photo credit: Alex Lau
We’re excited to have invited the authors behind Nom Wah Cookbook to share their turnip cake recipe with you! Nom Wah opened as a tea parlor and bakery in 1920 in New York. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Nom Wah Tea Parlor was first and foremost a bakery. Serving dim sum was a secondary priority, but they became known for some of their specialties. Nowadays, many Chinese communities savour these turnip cakes, especially during Chinese New Year, so we hope you’ll try making your own at home this year!
“It’s the story of a community of Chinese immigrants who struggled, flourished, cooked, and ate with abandon in New York City. ”
Turnip Cakes (Serves 6)
Ingredients:
5 dried shiitake mushrooms
2 medium daikon (Chinese radishes), approximately 21/2 pounds
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoon neutral oil, plus more for greasing
1 link Chinese sausage, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon dried shrimp, soaked in warm water for 30 minutes, dried, then roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon chicken powder 11/4 cups rice flour
Ground white pepper
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 scallion, finely chopped
Hoisin sauce for serving
1. Submerge mushrooms in hot water for 20 to 30 minutes until tender. Drain and roughly chop.
2. Peel the daikon and grate it on the largest holes of a box grater. Transfer to a large bowl along with the salt and mix together lightly. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 20 minutes.
3. Wrap the daikon in a kitchen towel and squeeze it over a bowl. Set the dry daikon aside. If you have less than 31⁄3 cups of daikon water in the bowl, add enough warm tap water to reach that amount.
4.In a large pot, preferably with a wide bottom, heat 1 tablespoon of the neutral oil over medium heat. Add the sausage, along with the hydrated shrimp and mushrooms, and cook, stirring constantly, until you see fat releasing from the sausage and it becomes slightly crisp, approximately 2 minutes.
5.Using a slotted spoon, transfer the sausage, shrimp, and mushrooms to a small bowl. Leave the fat in the pot. Stir in the dry daikon, sugar, and chicken powder. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Do not brown. Add the daikon water and bring to a boil, stirring frequently, then lower the heat to medium-low.
6.In a small bowl, whisk the rice flour, white pepper, and cornstarch, then whisk in just as much water as needed to form a slurry. Add the slurry to the pot and stir constantly for 2 minutes, or until a thick paste has formed. Turn off the heat. Return the sausage, shrimp, and mushrooms to the pot and stir to combine.
7.Steam. Oil a 9 x 13-inch baking dish, and use a rubber spatula to distribute the mixture evenly into the dish. Place the dish in the steamer and steam for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until cake is pearlescent and holds its form. Let cool in the refrigerator overnight. [T]he general setup to steam in a wok is as follows. Fill the wok with enough water to come up to the lower rim of the steamer but not so much the waterline is above the food bed. Line the bottom of the steamer with paper or a lotus leaf or something so that the fiddly bits won’t fall through the cracks.
8.To portion, remove the turnip cake from the baking dish, either by cutting it into pieces and removing with a spatula or, preferably, turning it out whole. If the latter, cut in half, then lengthwise in thirds, again lengthwise in thirds, and then across in thirds to form flat squares.
9.
Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons neutral oil a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Place the turnip cake slices in the pan, working in batches if needed. Cook, without stirring or moving them, for 3 to 4 minutes, until the turnip cakes are crispy on one side. Flip and repeat on the other side. Transfer to a paper towel–lined plate to drain excess oil.
To serve, place the slices on a serving platter, garnish with the scallion, and serve with hoisin sauce.
10.
To serve, place the slices on a serving platter, garnish with the scallion, and serve with hoisin sauce.
Sponsored by Palettera.
About the writers:
Joshua David Stein is an author and editor living in Brooklyn. He is the co-author of Notes from a Young Black Chef (Knopf), Il Buco Essentials (Harper Design), Food and Beer (Phaidon), Epicurean Journeys (Assouline) and the author of To Me He Was Just Dad (Artisan) He served as the U.S. editor for the best-selling Where Chefs Eat. Stein is the editor-at-large at Fatherly, a contributing editor to Food and Wine, and the former restaurant critic for the New York Observer and the Village Voice. His work has appeared in New York, The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, The Guardian, and many other outlets.
Wilson Tang the owner and operator of Nom Wah Tea Parlor. Prior to taking over the business in 2010, he was a financial analyst for Morgan Stanley. Wilson has expanded the Nom Wah footprint to include Nom Wah Tea Parlor in Philadelphia and Nom Wah Nolita, a contemporary offshoot in New York City that opened in 2016. Wilson lives with his wife and two children, Ryan and Lucy, a few blocks away from Nom Wah Tea Parlor.
Joshua David Stein is an author and editor living in Brooklyn. He is the co-author of Notes from a Young Black Chef (Knopf), Il Buco Essentials (Harper Design), Food and Beer (Phaidon), Epicurean Journeys (Assouline) and the author of To Me He Was Just Dad (Artisan) He served as the U.S. editor for the best-selling Where Chefs Eat. Stein is the editor-at-large at Fatherly, a contributing editor to Food and Wine, and the former restaurant critic for the New York Observer and the Village Voice. His work has appeared in New York, The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, The Guardian, and many other outlets.
Sponsored by Ferris Wheel Press.
