[New Year Chronicle] Hong Kong "Nian Taste" New Year Cakes: Fragrant "Nian Nian Gao" blessings for generations
[Explanation] Every Chinese New Year, every household in Hong Kong makes rice cakes and eats rice cakes.
Cantonese-style rice cakes are orange-red in color, sweet in taste, soft and springy, and rich in rice. It means "going up step by step". It is an indispensable food for Hong Kong people during the festive season.
The production process of nian gao is not complicated. Add coconut milk in a certain proportion to brown sugar water and stir evenly, then mix the sugar water batch with japonica rice flour, stir and sieve repeatedly to form a uniform paste, pack it into a steamer, and steam one and a half at high temperature It can be baked in about hours.
[Concurrent] Hong Kong Rice Cake Master Li Ruiying
Brown sugar water, glutinous rice flour, japonica rice flour, plus appropriate amount of coconut milk in it, steamed to have the fragrance of coconut milk. In the steaming process, in order to be more beautiful and bless people, we will add one Red dates are on top.
The nian gao in the Chinese New Year represents a step up, in fact, it is also a blessing to everyone.
[Explanation] Li Ruiying is the owner of a food company and has been making rice cakes for decades.
For her, her childhood memories of rice cakes are the unique taste of grandma's special "thousand layer cakes".
[Concurrent] Hong Kong Rice Cake Master Li Ruiying
When the children ate, they would tear it out layer by layer until I was about ten years old. Grandma was not old enough to watch us grow up, and she left.
I just steamed it when I re-mixed it myself. Then I realized how much the old old people had put in for us children. The original steamed rice cakes layer by layer were used for our children. A fun.
When she is steaming, she has to continue to burn the fire by herself, and she has to use time to steam it layer by layer, and she needs to have this heart to steam well.
[Explanation] After growing up, Li Ruiying gradually realized that the old taste rooted in the deep memory of childhood is not only the meticulous love and blessing of her elders, but also the silent guidance and intangible requirement for her life path.
[Concurrent] Hong Kong Rice Cake Master Li Ruiying
It turns out that it is layered layer by layer (rice milk), which is actually a blessing to us.
On every level, she told us that children grow up fast.
Until we come out to work, she hopes that we will be like these cakes, layer by layer, that is, step by step. When our age keeps getting older, she hopes that every layer must be down to earth, not cutting corners. .
So what they (older generations) mean to us invisibly, I hope these people can understand it now, and I hope that in the future, my children will understand that steaming rice cakes layer by layer is not easy.
[Explanation] With the social and economic development of Hong Kong and the improvement of people’s living standards, the materials for making rice cakes have gradually expanded from a single brown sugar japonica rice to vegetables, meat, and seafood. The taste of rice cakes has evolved from a single sweetness to a richer variety The taste.
Sweet and glutinous taro cakes, sweet and crispy horseshoe cakes, golden leg scallops and radish cakes combined with sea, land and air, etc., but no matter how the rice cakes change, in Li Ruiying’s eyes, the love and love carried by this small cake The blessings will last forever and be passed on from generation to generation.
[Concurrent] Hong Kong Rice Cake Master Li Ruiying
It's like carrot cake. It's smooth and refreshing, but it also has a bitter taste.
The taro cakes are very glutinous and will have a little salty aroma.
The horseshoe cake is very refreshing and sweet.
When eating rice cakes, they are both chewy and sweet. So in fact, these kinds of cakes represent that our lives are actually both sweet and bittersweet, but they are bound to be the same. A blessing to people, I hope everyone is sweet and sweet during the New Year.
Reporter Fan Siyi from Hong Kong
Editor in charge: [Wang Kai]