We had a bunch of organic baby white turnips in our produce box last week, and I have been struggling to come up with a way to cook them outside of the normal recipes or just eating them raw. I found a recipe for a Chinese turnip cake. I didn’t have all the ingredients, and there were a few healthier substitutions I wanted to make, so I deviated heavily from the recipe. I still kept the basic cooking instructions, although I did alter those to fit a few things in my own kitchen :).
..Turnip Greens..
– several organic baby turnips, grated
– 1 cup of water
– organic green onion, chopped
– organic red pepper chicken sausage, finely chopped
– 1 cup of organic rice flour
– 1 tbsp organic arrowroot powder
– 1 tbsp organic olive oil
– 1/2 tsp of sea salt
– 1/2 tsp of rock sugar (beet sugar)
– organic ground white pepper (or IC alternative)
Add the grated turnip and cup of water to a skillet and bring to a simmer. Simmer about 10 minutes, occasionally sitrring so the turnip does brown. It will produce liquid, although some will evaporate as it cooks. Continue to cook until you have about 3/4 a cup of liquid in the skillet. If you mess this up, you can simply add 3/4 a cup of liquid later on :). So no worries! Pour all of it, liquid included, into a large mixing bowl to cool.
Next, heat the oil in the same skillet on medium heat. Add the chicken sausage. Cook about 5-7 minutes. Then toss in the green onion, and cook just a few more minutes to blend the flavors. Remove from heat and leave to cool.
Add the rice four (I ground my own using an organic soaked and sprouted brown rice), arrowroot powder, sea salt, rock sugar, and white powder to the turnip and liquid. If you cooked all of your liquid out of the turnip, this is where you would add more. You can add 3/4 a cup of water or chicken or veggie stock (I had to add a little homemade veggie stock) or you can add something else like coconut aminos (which tend to be very IC friendly). Just be aware that if you’re using sausage, you will up the salt content by adding something like the aminos or store bought stock. Mix very well until the dry ingredients are incorporated.
Add in the sausage and onion mixture. Mix well and then let it sit for 15 minutes. And then add the mixture to a well coated bread pan.
This is the step that got a little tricky for me, because it requires you to steam the mixture for 50 minutes!!! And you can’t skip this step either. The cakes will fall apart if you do. Learned that the hard way :). Steam on medium high heat for 50 minutes. I had nothing I could use to steam a loaf pan. Nothing. Until I spied my crockpot! I simply added two cups of water to the crockpot and placed the bread pan so that it was resting on the edges of the top without touching the water. It took a few minutes to adjust the pan to keep it up and still get the lid on and completely shut, but I managed it. Turned it on high and left it to steam for 50 minutes. Or so I thought. Because I left the house with my mom for a bit to run an errand and told my husband “turn this off in 30 minutes EXACTLY”. Guess who didn’t turn the crockpot off lol ;). So ours steamed for about an hour and a half total. It was a little over-steamed.
Once it has steamed though (for the correct amount of time!), it needs to sit in the pan and cool for 30 minutes. You then loosen the sides with a spatula and turn it out onto a cutting board. You then use a sharp knife dipped in water (to prevent sticking) to slice 1/2 inch thick pieces. Since ours was over-steamed, it did not come out easy. It stuck together very well, but broke into large pieces when trying to remove it from the bread pan. I ended up shaping mine into patties, which worked just as well. At this point, it IS cooked completely, so you can eat it as it :). Joel and I split one to see how it would taste as is, and it was really good. Kind of like stuffing, but that was probably due to the sausage we used.
Next, add 1-2 tbsp of oil to a skillet over medium low heat. Pan fry the cakes on both sides until golden and crispy, being careful not to burn them.
Plate and serve with hot sauce or other condiment. And of course an IC option for those who need it. We used Sriracha sauce, but they would be delicious with sauerkraut, horseradish, sour cream.. just about anything. Asian dipping sauces would work great if you used shrimp in place of the sausage :). But no matter what you use, this recipe is incredibly tasty. After being pan friend, the turnip cakes have the consistency and flavor of crab cakes sans the actual crab taste. Like a cross between the rest of a crab cake and a stuffing without the traditional stuffing seasonings. I’m not sure that makes sense lol. But they were delicious.They make wonderful leftovers too :). Reheat under the broiler, by steamer, or by adding a few tablespoons of water to a skillet.
This recipe is a little time consuming, but it would make a great lunchtime prep. That way you’ll have almost everything done by the time you’re ready to begin supper with a huge break in between :). Once you get to the final cooking part, it goes pretty quickly. Even though it takes a while, the recipe is still relatively easy to make. Per serving this recipe contains 218 calories, 6.3 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 40 grams of cholesterol, 26.2 grams of potassium, 30.2 grams of carbs, 3.1 grams of fiber, .2 grams of sugar, 17.7 grams of protein, 10.8% of your daily vitamin A, 41.7% of your daily vitamin C, 2.9% of your daily calcium, and 6% of your daily iron. It makes a great dish for my cataplexy diet :). This particular combination put the sodium at 364 mg per serving, with the whole recipe serving six. While using sausage makes the sodium a little high, that is easily remedied by using a different organic brand or by making your own (which is more bladder friendly anyway). You can also sub in a different meat like minced sea food or chicken.
Next time I might try it using a little minced wild-caught shrimp with minced bell peppers and a touch of garlic or ginger. There are plenty of ways you can substitute certain ingredients to make it IC friendly! Just get creative :). They’d pair really well with the Terrain Cultured Veggies too! Oh the choices!
happiness grows.. 