家家酒@home: Steam Yam Cake 芋头糕

I bought a yam for making bo bo char char for a gathering but the gathering is being postphoned, so I was thinking of what to do with the yam. Suddenly thought of my mum's steam yam cake. I remember whenever she makes yam cake I will ask her to make more so that I can bring it to school for lunch and share with my close colleagues.

I went to search for some recipes on yam cake and found that most of the recipes seems different from my mum's version. My mum's yam cake has quite a lot of ingredients inside, for eg dried prawns, chinese sausages and mushrooms. And those recipes that i found will fry the dried prawns and sprinkle on top of the steam yam cake. I think I prefer my mum's version maybe because I have been eating it since young. One thing which is very very important to add on top of the yam cake is freshly fried small onions. I think it is like an icing on the cake, it has that 画龙点睛的效果！If you are lazy to fry your own small onions, you can get the stall bought ones, but than freshly made ones really make the yam cake taste much better. Actually, I will use the microwave to make my fried small onions. It's simple and you won't get your kitchen oily. I will slice the small onions put in a bowl, add oil till it covers all the onions. Than you put in the microwave on high heat and heat it for 2-3 minutes. The time will depend on the power of your microwave oven. The important thing in using this method is to keep on checking on the onions so that it will not get burnt. I will heat it up for 2 minutes, give it a check than bring it out and give it a stir and put it back to heat it again. Once the onions turn slightly brown, it is ready. Don't wait for the onions to turn really brown as it will continue to cook when you get it out from the oven. So it might get burnt if you cook too long in the oven. That's my tip on frying onions in microwave.

Ingredients:

1) 500g yam (skinned, diced)
2) 500g rice flour
3) 2 tbsp tapioca flour
4) 1000ml water
5) 5 dried mushrooms, soaked & sliced
6) 2 chinese sausages, take away the skin and diced it
7) 100g dried prawns soaked and chopped into small pieces
8) 2 Tbsp cooking oil
9) 1 tsp light soya sauce
10) 1 tsp sesame oil
11) 1 tsp pepper
12) 1 tsp sugar
13) 1/2 tsp five-spice powder (optional)

Garnishing:
1) 2 fresh red chillies (sliced)
2) 1 bunch coriander leaves (cut to 2cm lengths)
3) Fried shallot crisps
4) 2 tbsp sesame seeds
5) Chopped roasted peanuts (optional)

Steps:

1) Heat the oil used for frying small onions using microwave in a pan over medium high heat, and fry the dried shrimps and chinese sausages until they become aromatic.

2) Add the cubed yam and mushrooms to the pan, and fry it for a while.

3) In a separate bowl, mix the rice flour, tapioca flour and water, and stir until it forms a smooth paste. Take care to ensure there are no lumps in the mixture.

4) Add the flour mixture into the pan slowly, and stir until everything forms a thick paste.

5) Add the salt, pepper and five spice powder, and mix well.

6) Pour the mixture into a heatproof bowl/plate (I use aluminum tray) and steam over high heat for 45 minutes, or until cooked.