Continuing our adventure in recreating restaurant dishes at home, Stephen and I have been working on stir fried Shanghai Rice Cakes with little success. It’s one of our favourite dishes at Shanghai Dim Sum and one we order all the time. I was convinced the vegetable used was a kind of pickled Chinese cabbage. After trying two different brands and variations with seasoning, the flavour just wasn’t right. Stephen thought it was a fresh vegetable but we just couldn’t figure it out. Recently, we ate at Shanghai Dim Sum again with my family and was telling my mom about our unsuccessful cooking attempts. Right away, she named the mysterious greens! But in Mandarin. Luckily my cousin was there to translate and tada, the vegetable was Shepard’s Purse and is usually sold frozen in Asian grocery stores (similar to frozen spinach). With this puzzle piece in place, the rice cakes turned out bang on.
- 100g of ground pork
- 100g of frozen shepherd's purse vegetable
- 1 cup of frozen rice cakes
- 1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp white pepper
- Fill a large mixing bowl with cold water and put the frozen shepherd's purse in the bowl to defrost. Once it's full defrosted, squeeze the water out of the shepherd's purse using a paper towel or clean towel.
- In another bowl, soak the frozen rice cakes in water for about 5 minutes to soften
- In a separate bowl season the ground pork with the rice wine, salt and white pepper, mix thoroughly.
- In a large pot, boil water and cook the softened rice cakes as per their packaging. When cooked, remove the rice cakes from the water (do not pout out the hot water!) and rinse under cold water. This helps them from overcooking and sticking together.
- With the burner on high, add oil to the wok and heat until it just begins to smoke. Add the seasoned ground pork and stir fry until the browned and rendered.
- Add the drained shepherd's purse to the wok and stir fry for another 15 seconds.
- Quickly dip the cooked rice cakes in the pot of hot water before adding them to the wok, this will separate any rice cakes that have stuck together. Stir fry everything together for about a minute.
- Once the rice cakes are in the wok, make sure to keep them moving or they will stick to the wok.
Soak shepherd’s purse and rice cakes in water
Season the ground pork with the cooking wine, white pepper and salt
Drain the defrosted shepherd’s purse
Cook the rice cakes
Heat wok
Stir fry the pork and shepherd’s purse
Add the cooked rice cakes and serve
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