Singapore: 'carrot cake'

Is, as I suspected - and it turns out famously - unrelated to carrots. It's actually made from daikon radish, hence its whiteness. Its real name is chai tow kway - a popular Teochew* dish in these parts.

More confusingly, it IS the same stuff as Cantonese 'turnip cake'. And that's not turnip either, but radish! The translation confusion seems to come from the Chinese characters which can mean radish, turnip or carrot.

As I found out at the market today, fried carrot cake can be 'black one' (using sweeter soy) or 'white one' (salty, and quite spicy). I went for the white one this time. It's served up with omelette and spring onions. Quite nice, actually.

Stock image

*Teochew is a Chinese dialect / cuisine / etc originally from the Chaoshan region in North East China. The dialect is very common in Singapore.