Chai Tow Kway Radish Cake Fries with Sambal Mayo
Radish cake cut like chips, dusted in cornflour and fried crisp outside and chewy inside, finished with garlic-chai poh crumbs, sweet soy and a spicy sambal mayo: a café snack.
Method
Cut the cold, firm radish cake into batons 1.5 cm thick and 7 cm long and pat them very dry. Mix the cornflour, white pepper and salt in a bowl, roll the batons in it for a thin, even coat and shake off the excess.
Add in this stepRadish cake (store-bought lo bak go or homemade from the basic recipe), well chilled 400 gCornflour (cornstarch) 4 tbspGround white pepper ½ tspSalt ¼ tsp
Mix the mayonnaise, sambal and lime juice into a sambal mayo and keep it in the fridge.
Add in this stepMayonnaise 3 tbspSambal or chilli paste 1 tspLime ½
Pour the frying oil into a 22 cm · 2× pot, at least 4 cm deep and no more than half full, and heat over medium-high heat to 180 °C. Radish cake is moist and can make the oil spit, so dry your hands and the batons and slide them in away from you. Fry in the batches shown for each, stirring once or twice so they don't stick, until firm and pale golden, then lift onto a rack. Never leave the hot oil.
Add in this stepVegetable oil for deep-frying 700 ml
medium-high heatPut the crumb oil, garlic and chai poh in a small pan and cook over medium-low heat for ; when the garlic is pale gold, take it off the heat immediately and stir in the spring onions. It keeps colouring in the residual heat, so stop before it goes dark brown or it turns bitter.
Add in this stepVegetable oil (for the crumbs) 1½ tbspGarlic cloves, finely minced 3Chai poh (sweet preserved radish), finely chopped 15 gSpring onions 1
medium-low heatPile the fries on a plate, drizzle thin lines of kecap manis over them and scatter generously with the garlic-chai poh crumbs. Serve hot with the sambal mayo.
Add in this stepKecap manis (sweet soy sauce) 2 tsp
Cook's tip
Radish cake that isn't fully chilled will slump in the oil, so always use it cold from the fridge. For an air fryer, coat as above, spray with oil and cook at 200 °C for 12–15 minutes, turning once. The inside is very hot, so let them cool for a moment.
Cooking it at camp
Cut the radish cake at home and bring it in the cooler, with the crumbs made ahead in a jar. At the campsite, it's safer to shallow-fry in a wide pan with 1 cm of oil, turning each side, than to deep-fry. Let the used oil cool completely and bottle it to take home.