Black Glutinous Rice Cakes 乌饭麻糍

Black Glutinous Rice Cakes (乌饭麻糍) are pounded glutinous rice cakes made with rice soaked in the juice of wufan-tree (乌饭树) leaves, a snack of Taizhou (台州) in Zhejiang that Huangyan District (黄岩区) keeps as a traditional seasonal food. They are tied to the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, which local custom keeps as the birthday of the ox.

How it is made

The leaves come from the wufan tree, a low shrub also called shancao mi nao (山草米脑) or wutong tree (乌桐树), which bears small white flowers in summer and round purple fruit in autumn. They are picked in early summer: earlier the new shoots have not come out, later the leaves are too old to give juice. The washed leaves are pounded again and again, and the glutinous rice is soaked overnight in the juice. A Huangyan maker quoted by Taizhou Daily (台州日报) steams the rice without a lid so that it does not get too wet, and adds a little salt. The steamed rice is pounded in a mortar, rolled out about an inch thick on pine pollen or soybean flour to stop it sticking, and cut into pieces.

How it is eaten

The cut cakes are eaten with a little brown sugar, or wrapped round peanut powder, sesame or osmanthus. The texture is soft, sticky and elastic, and the pounded rice carries the fresh scent of the leaves.

Where it comes from

The Taizhou customs entry of the national local-chronicles office records that on the ox's birthday cattle were washed with wutong-leaf water and fed eggs, yellow rice wine and glutinous rice to build their strength. Rice cooked in the leaf juice was made into wufan, Black Glutinous Rice Cakes or wufan buns as festival food, and of these customs the rice cake survives as a snack. In Huangyan, Taizhou Daily reports, the ox was given the cake wrapped in straw and rested from ploughing that day. The making technique of Chaoji village (潮济村) in Beiyang town (北洋镇) is listed as Huangyan District intangible cultural heritage, and villagers make and sell the cakes on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month each year.