FROM THE GARDEN: Garlic Chive Cake

From the garden we harvest enough garlic chive to make a good number of garlic chive cake. This vegetable crop has for a long time been confused for leek. As a result, garlic chive cakes is often known as “leek cake.” To further add onto the incorrect taxonomy, it is called a cake but is technically a dumpling. Even yours truly (at toward the end of the video) regressed and called it a “leek cake.”

In any event, garlic chive dumpling or leek cake is originally from Chaozhou, China. It is the ancestral home to  a group of people known as Chaozhou or Chiu Chow or Teochew. Leek cake is as to the Teochew as apple pie is to Americans.

Because of theTeochew diaspora in Southeast, garlic chive cake is found to be a popular street food. Travel to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia; and you are bound to find this cake or dumpling being dished out by the street food vendors.

In Los Angeles, garlic chive cake can be found in select Teochew restaurants like Kim Chuy (in Chinatown.) Related: http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-object-of-desire-leek-cakes-20150102-story.html

Music tracks: Classic Teochew opera

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