Cooking Daikon Cake with My Mom

My weekend back home in Hawaii was quick and my schedule was tight, but I begged my Mom to take time to show me how to make one of my favorite dim sum dishes called loh bak gou, or daikon cakes. These are the white, creamy gelatin like slices filled with bits of mushrooms and sausages. At the restaurants, they’ll usually serve them up pan-fried, with the crispy edge.

But when my Mom made loh bak gou at home, she would steam it and we would eat it piping hot from the pan, with all that fresh flavors.

The main ingredient of the loh bak gou is the daikon, which is the Japanese word for the white Asian radish (which kind of looks like a large white turnip). Most English speakers might recognize the Japanese word daikon even though this Asian white radish is popular in China, Korea and lots of other Asian cultures, too.

My Mom was very particular about what type of daikon to use. I never realized there were different varieties, but apparently each variety is popular with each culture. For example, the Japanese daikon is typically long and slender, like a big root. The Korean daikon is stubby and typically has shades of light green, like a mint blush. The Chinese version is stubby like the Korean, but pure white with no green coloring. My Mom said this variety often found in Chinatown is the best to use because they cook up without a bitter taste as the other varieties, which she says are best for soups.

It’s probably a good idea to get all the ingredients for this dish from Chinatown. (See full recipe below.) This is a real authentic Chinese recipe calling for certain ingredients you’ll only find in Chinatown, including the dried shrimp and the Chinese-style bacon, called lap yuk. The lap yuk is what my Mom used in the video below (where she makes her first special guest appearance in my cooking videos), but when we were small, she’d use lap cheong, the Chinese sausages, which I think a lot of restaurants use today.

The loh bak gou is pretty easy to make, but watching my Mom I could see a lot of the measurements are based on how things look, whether it needed more rice flour or more water, it all depends. In the end, it turned out like how I remembered. Now I can make it for myself at home, and you can too! Enjoy!