The Chao Nian Gao (炒年糕) Experiment

I gotta say, that the first time I had Chao Nian Gao(stir fried rice cake), I wasn't too impressed. It was kinda sticky-gooey, and sank to the bottom of my belly and seemed to "camp out" for a good long period of time. It was interesting, because I'd never had rice cakes prepared in that manner. I did however have Korean Ddukbokki many times. Over the years, it has grown on me, and now I try to order Nian Gao whenever I see it on the menu. I usually see it on Shanghainese menus, though I recently had a version from a Yunnan Restaurant (post coming soon) that I thought was excellent. 

On a whim, during a recent visit to 99 Ranch Market, I picked up a package of dried Nian Gao disks, you can also find the rice cakes rolled into a rod like form, and cut your own, though you can substitute Dduk..... So I purchased my Nian Gao, and did nothing with it. Finally, the Missus, tired of waiting, told me to make the darn thing...tonight....

The problem being that the instructions say you need to soak these for at least 16-20 hours. So it was going to be a looooong wait for dinner to get on the table.

I decided to go ahead and soak these overnight.... which became two nights when we got occupied doing other things. On the third day I figured I'd better get round to making these. What follows is a basic outline of what I did, not a proper recipe. I used only what was on hand in the fridge and cupboard.

I had just finished off my Oxtail Soup, and had leftover greens.

 

They call these "Shen Lee" at 99 Ranch Market. They have a mild bitter-mustardy flavor.

We usually don't have pork on hand, but always have dried shrimp in the refrigerator. We will use shrimp as a pork substitute in many of our dishes like Dried Fried Green Beans 干煸四季豆. It handles heat well, and will crisp up, tasting like shrimp bacon. So I used a couple of tablespoons of  dried shrimp.

 

Instead of the standard lighter Shanghai version, I went with three types of soy sauce for flavoring, a dark, dark mushroom, and premium light soy sauces because, well, I just felt like it. 1 tsp each dark soy sauces and about 2 Tb light soy sauce. I also added a dash of white pepper. In retrospect, I should've also added some Sichuan Preserved Vegetable, but forgot I had some in cupboard.

And of course the Nian Gao:

Which had been soaking for 60 hours or so! I used half the package, a bit over 8 ounces dry. I made two batches of Chao Nian Gao over two days.

The cooking technique used is, of course Chǎo(炒), a method of stirfying. As mentioned above, I made two batches of Chao Nian Gao. On my first attempt, I cooked on the stovetop to allow for mistakes and adjustments. Here's how it turned out:

Good but a bit more chewy then I would have liked.

On my next try, I broke out my Big Kahuna (now why does that sound so wrong???) and let her rip at 55,000 BTUs. What came out was delicious.......with some decent "wok hay":

Man, this was good. It had turned out better than I thought it would. It was still pretty heavy stuff, it fills you up pretty quickly and you'll stay full for a while. I guess I'm adding this dish to my Big Kahuna Files. It is as a whole just a basic stir-fry, and quite easy to make.

In fact, I just bought another bag of Nian Gao. This one says to soak for only two hours....... 

Comments

[Jonathan]

Why bother when you can have fresh warm, pliable rice noodles, (sha ho fun)? They're on a wire rack towards the back of 99Ranch usually in the aisle where the rice sacks are, or end of the noodle aisle? Ok so the discussed above is denser, but I find the density not as wonderful as the chewy fresh, and fast. Add to that a bit of crust from a slow pan-fry and flip (lo) and voilà!

[Kirk]

Well Jonathan, it's because if you read, you'd know this was an impulse buy..... I now use the fresh stuff. But I also use high heat, not a slow pan fry, it gets too mushy..