What's your Chinese zodiac animal sign?
I'm a pig, as is my Chinese zodiac animal sign,
but starting this Friday it is the year of the ox.
Lots of foods are associated with the Chinese Lunar New Year but one of the most interesting
is called nian gao, or sticky rice cake, and there are a lot of versions of this cake even today,
but seeing as this is a history show we're going to make one using a recipe nearly 1500 years old.
So thank you to Roy Chan for translating some very old and very difficult Chinese and for
helping me with my pronunciations for words such as nian gao,
this time on Tasting History.
So I get a lot of reoccurring questions here in the comments on Youtube and in emails, and
Instagram, Twitter everywhere about you know how I started the channel what it takes to
make an episode, my research, etc etc and to kind of scratch that itch my
fiancé Jose has started his
own youtube channel called Ketchup with Max
where he basically interviews me about past episodes and
what it takes to make a Youtube channel, and whatever else we want to talk about. There are also
appearances by our cats Cersei and Jaime. Super informal and still a work in progress so if you
have suggestions on how we can improve we are all ears.
So make sure to watch and Subscribe to Ketchup with Max.
Link is in the description.
So one thing to know about Jose is he is the year of the dragon whereas i am the year of the pig,
and that just doesn't sit well with me, so I decided to
look into a bit of the history or the mythology of how these animals got chosen.
Why some people are dragons and tigers, and some of us are pigs and rats,
and I gotta say turns out the story is kind of cool.
It starts with the mythical Jade Emperor. Now he's so busy up in heaven that he's never
even had the time to go meet the animals down on earth so he invites them up to meet him, and
does so in the form of a race. And for some reason only 13 animals decide to race, not quite sure why,
and you'll notice that one of those animals never made it into the Chinese zodiac and that's the cat,
because cat had asked rat to wake him up and rat conveniently forgot.
Now the other 12 animals when they did attend the race came across a river near the end and the rat couldn't get across
so he asked the ox if he could hitch a ride and he did. Ox led him over and then he jumped off the rat
jumped off and sped to the finish line making him number one which is why he's the first animal in the Chinese Zodiac.
The pig is of course the last because he stopped for a snack and a nap,
which now I can see... maybe I am year of the pig... Maybe it's justified.
Now today's recipe may not be as old as the Jade Emperor or the Chinese zodiac but it's pretty ancient.
Comes from around 544 AD though in Chinese history, that's not that long ago.
It comes from the Qimin Yaoshu, by Jia Sixie of the Northern Wei dynasty,
roughly translated to 'Techniques by which the common people make their livelihood', it is the
best preserved of the ancient agricultural texts.
Now in the text the cake is not called nian gao but yeè,
which is an even older word for the cake but it's the same thing.
Yè: ground glutinous rice into flour and sift through fine silk mesh.
Mix with water and honey and form into stiff cakes.
Use hands to shape cakes to around 1 foot in length, 2 inches in width.
Cover with the flesh of jujubes and chestnuts and wrap in oiled bamboo leaves.
Steam until soft and well cooked.
So it's actually not that different from many of the modern versions and there are a lot of
variations on this cake throughout not only China but Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, even in Sri Lanka.
They can be red, white, yellow, have different kinds of fillings and toppings,
and they can be fried, or steamed, and some are round, and some are rectangular like the one that we're
going to be making today. The one that we're going to make today should kind of look like a brick
which is interesting but we'll get to that when we get to the history.
Now like I said this is often associated with the Chinese new year and it's supposed to make this next year better or higher,
and many of us probably need that in 2021, but I really like it because the name is a pun.
And I love puns.
See nian gao means New Year's cake but the words in Mandarin
also sound like sticky cake, and it is a sticky cake so it's apropoe. Also the word gao sounds like
the same word for high or tall so it sounds like high year or tall year so you're getting better..
Interesting.
So for this recipe what you'll need is:
one pound or 450 grams of glutinous rice flour.
Now to really follow this recipe exactly how it was written you can find glutinous rice and you
CAN grind it down, and you CAN sift it through silk mesh,
but i'm not going to do that when I think of that laborious process,
I hear the good advice of Bo Donaldsonand The Heywoods,
Billy, don't be a hero.
1 cup or 235 milliliters of water.
1 cup or 235 milliliters of honey.
Some jujubes.
So there are all sorts of types of jujubes. They're a type of date. These are going to be
red chinese dates but any jujube will work and honestly any date will work because jujubes are
kind of hard to find, and usually they're going to be dried because finding them fresh only usually
happens in the fall at least here in California.
A few chestnuts.
Again if you find these raw you can
use those they will be steamed so they'll be edible but it's a lot of work and frankly if you
can get them roasted it just livens up the flavor a little bit more so i'd go with roasted chestnuts.
Large bamboo leaves.
You can also use banana leaves, or lotus leaves, or even parchment for this
but if you are using leaves make sure to rehydrate them preferably overnight.
I left mine in the water for a couple hours
and it really wasn't enough. They were still kind of stiff.
And a bit of rice oil, or really any oil just to rub on the leaves.
So first mix the rice with the water and honey until everything comes together.
So this version of the batter or dough (I think batter)
is going to be a lot stiffer than a modern version which is so liquid it's actually pourable but the original
recipe that we're following says that we're going to mold this by hand and you can't really mold
water by hand unless you're the Avatar,
and I'm not. >:(
Then oil your bamboo leaves.
Okay full transparency,
sometimes I come across a recipe for the show,
and it kicks my ass, and this one did exactly that.
I tried my best to form this into a brick and i got it into a brick and then wrap it in bamboo leaves
it was very difficult and then get it steamed and it just didn't quite work. It kind of ended up
it just didn't work. I think it takes a lot of practice to get that technique down,
so I ended up following a more modern technique of putting it into a pan already lined with leaves.
It's a lot easier. It's definitely easier to steam and yeah I gave up, but I did try.
So once you put the batter into the mold cover the top with cut up chestnuts and jujubes.
Then set the cake in a steamer. You can also set another leaf loosely on top to keep the water from dripping on the cake.
Now the amount of time it needs to steam can really vary depending on the cake
and what steamer you're using but I steamed mine for about two hours and that was perfect.
Just make sure that your water doesn't go dry.
So often at Chinese New Year you drink different types of wine, unfortunately I could not find any Chinese wine
so I am drinking some Chinese beer. It's actually brewed in Beijing so that's kind of cool. So I'm gonna pop open my beer,
as I tell you some other reasons why this cake is associated with the Chinese New Year.
Now just like most ancient history regardless of where it's from, there's always some truth
and some myth and the story of nian gao is no different it has plenty of both, but let us start with the truth.
In the 5th century BC during a time known as the spring and autumn period
in the state of Chu there was a young man named Wu Zixu. Now he wasn't actually known by that name at that time.
He changed his name, a lot of people changed their names in Chinese history, even after they're dead.
They can be known by something else so becomes very confusing so for our intents and purposes,
we're going to call him Zixu for this story.
Now the young man's father did something to anger King Ping,
and Ping was not the king's name again at the time, it was later, but for our story King Ping and
so Ping killed his father and his brother, and tried to kill Zixu but he escaped and ran away
before he could be captured. Running away caused him so much stress that he aged.
That's why I don't run.
He aged so much that the guards when they finally did catch up to him didn't recognize him
and just moved him along like storm troopers outside of Mos Eisley.
"Move along".
I'm thinking that might be a little bit of myt,h but what is true is that Zixu ran away to the neighboring kingdom of Wu.
So when he got to this new kingdom he went to the prince but according to the ancient annals of Lü Buwei
the prince dismissed him saying,
"His appearance matches exactly what I detest most in a man."
Gnyah (???), that's got to hurt.
Honestly really uncalled for but
luckily Zixu had thick skin and said
'You know what I will stand behind a curtain and all you'll see are my hands while I talk to you. Would that work?'
Incidentally that's actually how Mariah Carey's assistants have to approach her,
but the prince said okay but he didn't need that curtain for very long because once the prince heard his
plan he was all like okay let's be friends because the plan was to kill the prince's uncle who
was currently the king, so that the prince could become the new king of Wu.
And that's what happened.
There was a coup, the king was assassinated, and the prince became King Helü of Wu. While Zixu became one
of his top generals. Incidentally another one of the top generals at the time was Sun Tzu who wrote "The Art of War."
So I think that's a cool little historical easter egg, little cross over there.
Now we don't know exactly why Zixu was doing all of this plotting but one theory is that it
was to get revenge for his father and his brother because once he became a general he took an army,
went back to his homeland and was going to kill King Ping but King Ping had already died and left
the throne to his son Zhao, but Zixu did not really see that as a problem because
"King Zhao of Chu fled and so Wu Zixu took possession of the capital at Ying.
He personally shot arrows at the royal palace,
opened the burial mound of King Ping of Chu and whipped the corpse 300 times."
"Wahahaha, he's already dead." :'(
So now famous for beating up dead people his star was on the rise,
and he went back to the kingdom of the prince who he had helped become king and built these mighty walls around the capitol.
Unfortunately during that time that king died and left his son Fuchai on the
throne and unfortunately Fuchai had an advisor who was a bit of a jerk.
So when you Zixu warned the new
king that there was another enemy out there, it was another kingdom nearby, this nefarious advisor
convinced the king to rebuff Zixu's warning really, really harshly because the king gave Zixu
a sword and made him commit suicide but legend has it that before he died he told his friends
that if the city was ever under siege and the people were starving that they should just dig
down near the city walls about three feet and they'd be taken care of.
Very cryptic and in fact in one version of the story his friends just thought that he was drunk but not long
after he died the city was in fact under siege by that same enemy he had warned the king about
and the people were starving, so they dug down three feet and found that many of the bricks that
his walls were built out of were made of glutinous rice flour. So they were edible they were basically nian gao.
Which is why it totally makes sense that our cake is in the shape of a brick.
Now every year since that happened the people of the area will eat this cake in honor of Wu Zixu for saving their ancestors.
So now that's how the cake started supposedly but it really gets
tied in with the Chinese New Year in two much shorter myths.
One is that the god of the hearth or the kitchen god Zao Jun
goes up to heaven during Chinese New Year every year to check in with the Jade Emperor.
That was the guy who had the race with the 12 animals,
and when I say check in
I mean to snitch because basically that's what he does he snitches on the doings of the family
from whichever kitchen he came from and you know what they say about snitches.
Snitches get glutinous rice cake.
Yes, the family offers the kitchen god nian gao to gum up his mouth
so that he can't rat on them.
Kind of reminds me of that scene with Mumbles from Dick Tracy.
Mumbles: "Bibydiditt. Biboydiditt"
The other story starts with a mythical beast from ancient times.
According to legend there was a beast who lived in the mountain named Nian,
and most of the year the beast was up there feeding on other beasts,
but during the winter those beasts would hibernate and so he would have to go down the mountain
to feast on the children of whatever village was nearby.
Then one day a Taoist monk came
to town named Hongjun Laozu and offered to rid the village of the beast.
So this monk goes up the mountain to find Nian and tells Nian hey stop eating the people of China and Nian is like
'Dude I'm a beast, I'm gonna eat you'and the monk says 'Okay but let me take off my robes
first because they're not gonna taste good'.
Nian says 'Okay', he takes them off and his underwear
is red, and it turns out Nian hates red, and
Nian goes 'Ahhhhh!' D: and runs away.
So then the monk goes down the mountain and says just put out red every year, Chinese New Year and the beast Nian won't
come down and eat your kids, and you know what fire off some fireworks as well just to scare him away even more,
and if he does come and he's hungry you can give him some glutinous rice cake
so he'll eat that instead of eating your kids.
Nian gao, cake for Nian. Nian gao, new year's cake.
It's all full circle. They're really good with the word play.
So there you go three different stories about nian gao, and its association with the Chinese New Year. Most of them...
probably myth but there was some fact in there including making bricks out of glutinous rice,
because they found that some of the bricks used in the Great wall of China during the Ming Dynasty
are actually made of mud, straw and glutinous rice.
It is really sticky, so it makes sense why they would use it to like stick bricks together.
Luckily our cake does not have any mud or straw in it
so hopefully it'll taste pretty good.
So once you've steamed your cake for a few hours you can take it out,
and it's really ready to serve, though it will harden if you put it into the
refrigerator but you can then take it out and just either re-steam it or some people slice it and dip
it in egg and fry it but it should be served warm either way.
And here we are, nian gao, ye,
or glutinous New Year's rice cake.
Now like Isaid some people will cut this up and dip it
in egg and fry it but a lot of people just eat it eat it raw. Not raw, it's cooked but-
haha, it's SO sticky.
Oh my gosh I'm not gonna-
this is not a chopstick food. I'm gonna-
it's probably gonna stick to my fingers but-
Oh my gosh. Let's take a bite.
I can't even get it off the plate.
Two hours later...
That is stiiiiiiiicky.
Wow. 0_o
The flavor is really nice, it's mostly honey.
I use this wonderful Chinese winter honey that has kind of a floral flavor. A lot of modern cakes they
use brown sugar, or caramel, caramel so that's what you'd taste, but I taste honey
but the texture it's gooey. It's a fun texture but boy!
A few bites is going to give your jaw a workout.
That is REALLY chewy. Really chewy.
So make sure to watch Ketchup with Max (& Jose). Link is in the description,
and have a wonderful Chinese New Year,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
*chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug