People from north of China eat dumplings during Spring Festival while people from southern part of China eat rice cake. Rice cake is usually the first course of our family reunion dinner on New Year’s Eve. It’s not difficult to cook rice cake. I’ve cooked it about 3 times. Today I cooked rick cake again for lunch,sharing with my family. Of course, there are several possible methods of cooking rice cake. I’d like to share my version with you!

Ingredients:rice cake, vegetables, carrots, mushrooms, pork, dried prawns, green onions

Step One: Cut vegetables into pieces as well as green onions. Cut carrots and mushrooms into strips. Peel dried prawns and cut them into pieces. You can also use dried baby shrimps instead. As for pork, you can use fresh pork as an ingredient. But I prefer local Jangyourou (sun-dried, soy sauce soaked pork). (I used Jangyourou this time.) Wash Jangyourou with lukewarm water first. Then steam it for 20 minutes in a pot. After that, cut Jiangyourou into strips or slices. Cut rice cake into slices.Wash rice cake with cold water and then remove to a colander to drain off water.

Step Two: Preheat the wok. Add a little cooking oil.Then put green onion stalks, mushrooms, carrots and a little vegetables in the wok. Give them a quick stir. Stir-fry for several seconds. Then add rice cake, prawns, Jiangyourou to the wok. Keep stirring for a minute. You can pour a little boiled water in the wok during the process of stirring. Place the rest of the vegetables in the wok. Stir-fry them until the rice cake becomes soft. In the meanwhile, add an appropriate amount of boiled water if necessary. At the end of cooking, add an appropriate amount of salt and a little gourmet powder. Stir them well. Now we can remove them to a plate and serve!

Rice cake is called Nian gao by Chinese. And “gao” sounds the same as the word for high or tall. Therefore, eating rice cake during Spring Festival symbolizes achieving new heights in the coming year.

I’d also lke to share some other pictures of food local people eat during Chinese New Year.

Fish Gelatin; Sun-dried, Soy Sauce Soaked Chicken; Dried Eel; Clams