Eating rice cakes with the seasons: Sweet rice cake is pure and must be steamed with full attention; red tortoise cake brings good fortune from the start of the year to the end

Kueh, a rice-based snack, can be savory or sweet and comes in all sorts of shapes. The traditional method is either to soak white rice (glutinous rice, zailai rice, or penglai rice blended in different proportions depending on the type of kueh), grind it into a slurry, press it dry, knead it into a dough, and wrap it around a filling; or to grind it into a slurry and mix the filling in directly, then steam it.

Taiwanese people became a kueh-eating people not only because of our rice-based food culture, but also because of religion. Taiwanese people love to worship, and by solar terms alone one can worship from the Spring Festival and Lantern Festival through Qingming and the Dragon Boat Festival all the way to the Winter Solstice, the sending off of the Kitchen God, and New Year's Eve, with the monthly "zuoya" rites on the 1st and 15th of each month in between; by object of worship, it ranges from the Jade Emperor, the Three Officials, Mazu, the Wang Ye, the Earth God, and the Foundation Lord, down to one's own ancestors and lonely wandering spirits. These frequent sacrificial ceremonies have always required all kinds of kueh. In addition, kueh was an important snack provided to farmers during labor exchanges in the rural era. Making kueh was therefore an essential skill for farm women in earlier times.

But with the progress of the times, various seasonal rituals and religious activities have gradually declined, and for many people kueh has become a Taiwanese cultural symbol they "know of, but are not familiar with" - so much so that the chances to even eat it are few and far between.

For this reason, "Upstream and Downstream" specially invited the kueh cooking classroom "Shuangkou Lu" and its Zhou Peiyi to explain the history of kueh for everyone. She has eaten kueh made by her grandmother Lu Liu Awei since childhood, and her grandmother taught her the craft of making kueh hand by hand. In the festive atmosphere of seeing off the old and welcoming the new, everyone should rediscover the deliciousness of kueh, and together "steam kueh for a good year, eat kueh to make big money." (For the story of Shuangkou Lu, see here)

Sweet rice cake for the New Year, fa kueh to make money, radish cake to eat in season

Memories related to kueh should start with the Spring Festival. Zhou Peiyi says: "In my memory, before the New Year Grandma would always busily and solemnly move about the kitchen, and the New Year cake steaming in the steamer atop the big stove - when the lid was opened, that aroma of wood mixed with sweetness was the most unforgettable thing of all!"

Among the sweet kueh, fa kueh leads the charge, symbolizing wealth, prosperity, and development. Fa kueh is made with brown sugar, and because yeast is added, the top naturally splits open after steaming, just like a blooming flower. The more flowers that bloom in the steamer, the more prosperous the coming year's fortune.

Equally important is sweet rice cake. Zhou Peiyi says that in ancient times sweet rice cake was usually made quite thick and was not easy to steam through, requiring careful attention and control of high and low heat, so Grandma would usually make it in the early hours of the morning to avoid disturbance from people walking around. "Grandma always said: 'Sweet rice cake is pure and must be steamed with full attention.' Our ancestors will know this sincerity."

Sweet rice cake and fa kueh are not only offerings for bidding farewell to the year on New Year's Eve; on the first day of the lunar new year, "kaizheng," they are also indispensable before the tablets of the gods and ancestors.

Relatively speaking, the main purpose of making radish cake is to use up the white radishes that abound in winter. Zhou Peiyi says, "Grate the white radish, boil it, then mix it into rice slurry and steam it - this is one way the Minnan and Hakka communities of Taiwan interpret white radish."

Eating kueh with the seasons

Caozaiguo is the kueh of Qingming

If the radishes that abound in winter cannot all be eaten, they can also be grated and dried into dried radish. At Qingming when honoring ancestors, fry it until fragrant to make "caipomi," wrap it in a kueh skin with added mugwort (mugwort) or mugwort, and you have delicious caozaiguo.

Caozaiguo was originally a grave kueh, an offering for honoring ancestors when sweeping tombs. But for Zhou Peiyi, "bringing homemade caozaiguo and sweeping tombs and enjoying the spring outing with family at the Spring Equinox, Grain Rain, and Qingming - that was the early way of picnicking!"

At the Dragon Boat Festival, eat kueh zong - very similar to, yet different from, caibaoguo

Every year at the Dragon Boat Festival, netizens always argue for a few days over the taste of southern versus northern zongzi, but for Zhou Peiyi, the most delicious thing is actually the kueh zong made by Grandma. Kueh zong is made by stir-frying dried radish from winter together with dried goods until savory and fragrant, wrapping it in kueh dough, and then wrapping it in shell ginger leaves or ma bamboo leaves into the shape of a zongzi.

Relatively speaking, the caibaoguo eaten in winter uses fresh white radish grated into shreds for its filling, which is wrapped in kueh dough, shaped directly, and placed on leaves to steam. Besides the different fillings and appearances, the proportions of rice used for the kueh skin are also completely different between the two! When you have the chance, you might as well compare them and see if you can find the difference between the two.

"Eat rice sieve noodles, and coins will plug the gaps between your toes"

The weather has been chilly lately, but following Zhou Peiyi's memories, let us together imagine a farm field in the heat of summer. In an era before farming was mechanized, harvesting required a great deal of manpower. The men sweated in the fields, while the women - Grandma and the elderly aunties - worked hard in front of the big stove rubbing rice sieve noodles. Making rice sieve noodles takes three people working together: one person rubs the rice sieve noodles through a special tool into boiling water, one person is responsible for scooping out the cooked rice sieve noodles, and another person stirs the scooped-out rice sieve noodles in cold water to keep them from sticking together.

The rice sieve noodles were either put into icy sweet syrup or stir-fried with savory ingredients, then placed in a snack bamboo basket and carried on a shoulder pole to the fields - a snack that the farmers coming for labor exchange and swap work eagerly looked forward to for replenishing their strength. Zhou Peiyi remembers that in childhood, before Grandma gave them to the farm workers to enjoy, she would always first scoop out some translucent-white rice sieve noodles and add icy sweet syrup to let the children satisfy their cravings. "The fragrance of sugar accompanied by the rice