Taro cake

In Cantonese, this is referred to as "Carrot cake", even though I've always doubted the presence of carrots in this tasty dish. It isn't a cake, it is more like fudge, but lightly fried and very, very fragrant, thanks to the abundance of seasonings. It tastes very nice, and depending on what you add it can be spicy. I like mine with more pepper. Indeed, in some dim sum restaurants you can order how you want them cooked and they fry them on the spot for you. One of the highlights of a dim sum meal.

Ingredients

• 1.28 kg. taro, look in Chinatown
• 80 g. wheat starch
• 200g. cured meat, chopped into pellets
• 2 stalks parsley, chopped
• 400 g. rice flour
• 40 g. dried small shelled shrimps
• 20 g. black mushroom pellets
• 80 g. pork

• 1 tablespoon each of sugar and salt
• 2 tablespoons light soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sesame oil
• A bit of MSG
• 1 1/2 teaspoons each of five-spice powder and pepper powder

1. Skin the taro, cut it into thick pieces. Cook them for 40 minutes and cut them into coarse pellets.
2. Pour oil in and saute dried small led shrimps, cured meat and black mushrooms.
3. Put autumn rice flour and Tang flour (wheat starch) together in a large basin, add 15 cups of water to mix well, add seasonings, taro and the previous mixture and stir well, steam the mixture for 15 minutes and stir it well into paste.
4. Pour the cake paste into a pot applied with oil, steam it for 1 hour 20 minutes, sow parsely on and steam them for 3 minutes more. Shallow-fry or steam the taro cake a bit more then serve.