Steamead Teochew Pumpkin Cake

With the remaining half pumpkin after stir-frying it for dinner last night, I was contemplating on what to do with it. A few recipes came to mind, one of which was to do a pumpkin Q-yuen, much like those served at Taiwanese Dessert place, but I was low on glutinuous rice flour, so that experiment will have to wait.

Then out of curiosity, I decided to tweek this recent attempt by substituting the yam with pumpkin. This turned out good as well, but the texture was softer, my guess is that this might be due to higher water content of pumpkin as compared to yam. Just my 2-cents...


STEAMED TEOCHEW PUMPKIN CAKE
Yield: 6" round with 1" height
Source: "Yummy Street Fare" page 76
Ingredients:
1 tbsp oil
1/2 tbsp chopped shallot (2 pips)
1/4 tsp chopped garlic (1 pip)
2 tbsp dried prawns (weight is 20g)

400g pumpkin, shredded coarsely (weight with skin is 500g)
50g rice flour
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp fine salt

Method:
1/ Heat up oil, saute chopped shallot and garlic till aromatic, then add in dried prawns to stir-fry till well mixed. Dish up and set aside.
2/ Shred pumpkin into a mixing bowl, add in mixture from (1) above followed by the rice flour, pepper and salt.
3/ Mix well, then pour the pumpkin mixture into 6" square tray and press tight to compact it.
4/ Steam at high heat for 20 minutes or until cooked, then remove and leave to cool before cutting into serving-size pieces for consumption.

Notes:
+ Mixture was wetter compared to the one for yam, and the resulting cake was more moist.