Fried Carrot Cake 菜頭粿

As a child growing up in BP, I had the breakfast staple of Cai Tau Kueh.  There were a lot of stalls outside our chinese drug store: chai tau kueh stall, man chiam kueh stall, and other stalls that I could not remember (maybe the noodle or power mee stall).  These stalls added to the hustle and bustle of the place, it was like, early in the morning, everything and everyone was awake already and doing business.  There was a wet market nearby, and after people bought their fish, meat and vegetables, they walked over to my shop to get their over- the- counter medicine and prescription chinese herbs. Then they can get their cai tau keuh and man chiam kueh and things like that. All this continued until one day, the municipality decided that no one could hawk their wares on the road under the five foot way and all got uncremoniously chased off!  What a shame!  A part of my childhood sight and sound got erased. It seemed that these stalls blocked and obstructed traffic but it was quite silly, because traffic was never heavy back then.

We never had a sit-down breakfast of bread and taste and Milo, this only happened to me when I got married and stayed with my in-laws who are bread and butter people!  What we had for breakfast is quite a tricky affair! Everything was bought and sourced from around the stalls and streets!

First, the workers (kuli) will buy a pot of black kopi-o.  Then he will cycle to other stalls to buy packets of mee, mee hoon, or kueh teow (all 20 cents a packet).  Then we will eat the noodles with kopi-o.  My mother never stocked tins of Milo, or powdered milk and we never ever had bread or butter or cheese.  If we wanted bread, it would be the roti-kiap that you buy from kopitiam: steamed bread or toast with kaya and margarine, this is very popular now at modern day kopi tiam!

Sometimes, if we do not fancy the noodles, or bread,  we will have chai tou kueh or man chiam kueh.  Sometimes we had that too often, we turned our noses at them.  But now, I crave for them!

I hated my shop house lifestyle back then too! I envied those with proper houses, with dining rooms where you sit down for breakfast...ha ha ha!!! Suddenly, kaya toast, soft boiled eggs, kopi-0 has become the "in" breakfast food (expensive too!).


If I go even way back when, I can remember buying chai tau kueh on squares of leaf, the size of the leaf was according to what you pay: five cents or ten cents or the biggest: 50 cents! Somewhere along my girlhood, plastic suddenly made its appearance, and these leaf dissappeared!

By the way we do not have a big fridge or freezer too, because we ate everything fresh from the market, nothing is ever frozen! I do so hate frozen prawns now!

Chai tao kway (Traditional:菜頭粿; Simplified:菜头粿 ) is a common dish or dim sum of Teochew cuisine in Chaoshan (China), Singapore and Malaysia. It is also known as "fried carrot cake" or simply "carrot cake" in Southeast Asian countries, as the word for daikon (POJ: chhài-thâu), one of its main ingredients. There is no connection between this dish and the sweet Western carrot cake eaten as a dessert. This misnomer gave the title to a popular guidebook on Singapore's street food, There's No Carrot in Carrot Cake, which was published by Epigram Books in 2010. It is made of rice flour and white daikon. In Malaysia this is often served in large rectangular slabs which are steamed and then later fried whole. The versions served by hawkers in Johore and Singapore, where Teochews live, typically is prepared by frying the daikon cake with chopped preserved radish, diced garlic, eggs, and Chinese fish sauce in place of soya sauce. Chopped spring onion is added just before serving. Chili sauce is added for those who prefer a spicier dish. As you go northwards (e.g. in Kuala Lumpur), the same dish is darker due to the use of dark soya sauce, and bean sprouts are added. The "black version" mentioned below is not "chai tow kway", but "char kway" and uses rice cake fried with garlic (usually no preserved daikon), bean sprouts, eggs and thick sweet dark sauce. In Singapore, however, it is more commonly cut into pieces and stir fried with eggs, garlic, spring onion and occasionally dried shrimp. There are two variants: the "white" version does not use sweet soy sauce, and the carrot cake is fried on top of a beaten egg to form a crust; the "black" version uses sweet soy sauce, and the egg is simply mixed in with the carrot cake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_tow_kway