Winnowing-Tray Steamed Rice Cake 簸箕炊

Winnowing-Tray Steamed Rice Cake (簸箕炊) is a white rice cake from western Guangdong, steamed layer by layer in a woven bamboo winnowing tray (簸箕) and eaten in Zhanjiang (湛江) cut into small diamonds under garlic oil, black-bean sauce and sesame. It belongs to the he (籺) family, the rice and cassava-flour snacks of Maoming (茂名), Zhanjiang and parts of neighbouring Guangxi.

How it is made

Rice is ground on a stone mill into a slurry, which is poured evenly into the tray-shaped steamer. When that layer is steamed through, another is poured over it, and this is repeated several times before the cake comes out and is cut. A Zhanjiang Daily writer recalls his mother making it at home by pouring the slurry layer by layer into an aluminium pan.

How it is eaten

On Chikan Old Street (赤坎老街) in Zhanjiang, the same writer describes a vendor lifting a cloth off the bamboo tray and cutting the snow-white, many-layered cake into diamond-shaped pieces. Each plate gets a spoonful of golden garlic oil, made by frying red-skinned garlic in hot peanut oil, then a dark fermented black-bean sauce (豉汁) simmered with star anise and cassia, which tastes salty with some sweetness, and finally toasted white sesame. The pieces are speared with bamboo skewers. A street vendor he remembers from his school days fried the cake first in winter, so it came out crisp outside and tender inside.

Flavour and texture

The cake is soft and springy and carries a faint bamboo scent, and the layers separate slightly where they meet. Within Zhanjiang, Anpu town (安铺镇) in Lianjiang (廉江) is especially known for its version.