Paradox Blog

The Year of the Horse will begin on February 12th, 2002, the day of the new moon closest to “the Beginning of Spring” mark in a Chinese calendar. One week before the New Year arrives, on February 5th, or the 24th day of the twelfth moon, the “Kitchen God” prepares to leave his post at the family’s hearth in the kitchen and takes the annual trip back to the court of the Jade Emperor in heaven. He is to report on what he has observed during the past year, especially the misbehaviors within the family where he posted. To sweeten his view, I remember my grandmother cooking sweet rice ball soup for his sendoff and thus began about three weeks worth of New Year festivities, which will end on February 26th this year, the first full moon after the lunar New Year.

Why sweet rice ball soup? Made from ground sweet rice (also called glutinous rice), sweet rice balls have a sticky and gluey texture. It is said that the “Kitchen God” has a sweet tooth. To gain his favor, we cook the sweet treat and if he really has anything bad to say about us, we hope the sticky rice balls will glue his mouth shut that he cannot utter even a bad word about us.

Glutinous rice, one of the many varieties of rice, comes in both long grain and short grain. It is called “glutinous” because it is especially sticky when cooked. The short grain variety is used to make lots of sweet desserts and thus the name, sweet rice. The long grain variety is often used in salty dishes instead. Food made out of sweet rice is associated with many festival occasions in our culture. For the celebration of the New Year, we have “nien gao” (sweet rice cake), sweet rice balls and stuffed sweet rice balls. We have “nien gao” for breakfast the morning of the New Year’s Day. On Lantern Festival, we celebrate the first full moon after the New Year and the last day of the New Year festivities with the display of lanterns and having a variety of stuffed sweet rice balls. And of course we bribe the “kitchen god” with a bowl of sweet rice ball soup for his sendoff.

In Bay Area, with a sizable Asian population, almost all lunar New Year festival related items can be found in supermarkets specialized in Asian ingredients. About one month before the lunar New Year, these supermarkets start to stock their seasonal shelves with varieties of “nien gao” and other New Year related items. The bakeries that cater to Asian clientele make and sell their own “nien gao”. Sweet rice balls and stuffed rice balls can be found year-round in the freezer section of Asian supermarkets. Why do I bother to try to make them myself? For this past Christmas, I had a lot of fun making holiday cookies from scratch with my 5-year old. Making the cookies ourselves got us into the holiday spirits. I hope making Chinese New Year treats at home will create a little of the festivity that I remembered growing up and arose the curiosity in my daughter. I know my 5-year old who would enjoy cookies any day, will snub her nose at these sweet rice cake and rice balls, but this is for her. Knowing how to make these sweet rice treats makes me feel connected to my mother and my grandmother; both had passed away. I am recording the know-how for my daughter, in case one day she would want to know about these things.

To make stuffed rice balls, there are actually two ways. Besides the recipe that follows, traditionally for the Lantern Festival, rice balls are made from shaking the sweet stuffing on a bed of rice flour in a big bamboo basket to form rice balls. First you roll the stuffing paste into tiny balls and dab them with water.  Since the moisture from the water will attract the dry flour, a crust starts to form around the stuffing balls while they are been shaken in a bed of rice flour. These rice balls are then deep fried in oil or cooked in boiling water for a festival treat.

More than one flavor can be found for both “nien gao” and stuffed rice balls. Other than black sesame paste, the most popular stuffing, rice balls are stuffed with adzuki bean paste, peanut butter paste, lotus been paste, or black dates paste. Other than the most common brown sugar flavor, green tea, taro, adzuki beans and peanut butter are also popular flavors for “nien gao” sold in stores.

For the rice balls and stuffed rice balls, to cook them, just boil enough water in a pot, put the rice balls in only when the water is boiling and continue to boil the water until the rice balls have floated to the surface. Scoop out the cooked rice balls into a bowl, add some of the water in the pot to the bowl, and to further sweeten the soup, add sugar if it is desired.

On the morning of the New Year’s Day, we usually deep-fry “nien gao” for breakfast. First slice the rice cake into ½ inch thick and about 2 inch by 4 inch in size. Make a batter out of wheat flour, water and an egg. Dip rice cake slices in batter and deep fry them in hot oil until the batter turns golden brown. How does it taste? It’s crunchy outside and chewy inside. Most sweet rice desserts take a little getting used to for people of the western palate, like my daughter. It is a taste from long ago when sweet rice was abundant and the only affordable ingredient at hand. It cannot compete in popularity nowadays with cookies and cakes. On the other hand, cookies and cakes cannot compete in nostalgia with these sweet rice treats.