Totally Non-Traditional Turnip Cake (Lo Bak Go) Recipe
If you've ever been to a Chinese dim sum restaurant, you may have seen on the menu (or tried, if you're adventurous!) the "turnip cake" or lo bak go. Truth is, it's not really made of turnips, and it's not really a cake. Traditionally this recipe is made with something more akin to a daikon radish (which has some similarities to a turnip) but we made it with these amazing bright red watermelon radishes! The end result came out a really pleasant pink colour, though after we had fried them, they did resemble spam!
We've made a few substitutions in this recipe. Instead of the more traditional dried shrimp, we added XO Sauce, which is a slightly spicy seafood condiment from China. We also replaced the Chinese sausage with bacon, because we had it on hand, and we wanted the bacon grease to fry the mushrooms and line the steaming dishes we used. Also, it's pretty easy to improvise a steamer if you don't have steamer trays. We used a stock pot with an insert in the bottom and stacked the dishes on top.
