Patron Exclusive Recipe #17 Rice Cake Soup with Tofu, Pickles, and Mixed Veg (嵊州豆腐年糕)

Happy New Year, guys!!! Wish you a happy, prosperous, and healthy year of 2020!

A quick update on my side, I (Steph) officially quit my job as the Simplified Chinese Language Consultant at Marriott Group, and now I'm full-time on the channel! 

I won't be able to do this without all the great support from you guys along the way. So again, please accept our most sincere appreciation. You're the best!

I want to do a rice cake dish for this year's first Patron recipe. Because of the good old auspicious meaning in rice cake's Chinese name: Nian Gao (年糕), sounds like "year high/年高", which can also mean each year is getting "higher and better". 

So with this dish, I wish you a year of higher achievement and better everything! 

Also, the dish is just so great and soothing, lol.

Now let's get started.

  **Ingredients**  (Serves Two)

1. Rice cake, 250 grams. I'm using the already cut fresh ones from Shengzhou/嵊州, Zhejiang Province, where this dish is from.
You can use the store brought rice cake. I asked one of our Patreons about rice cake situation before, and she checked that rice cake is available in American supermarkets (Thank you, Ping Ping). Most commonly you'll find Korean ones (frozen), which would totally work here. Japanese ones would also work great. You may also be able to find vacuum-sealed Chinese rice cake in Chinese supermarkets too. So just check your local store.

(The traditional rice cake I'm using.)

2. Soft tofu, 1 block, about 350 grams. No special requirement here.

3. Pickled vegetables, 30 grams.
So in Shengzhou, they use their special pickled Chinese mustard (xuelihong/ 雪里蕻 ). It's one type of pickled Chinese mustard green, very similar to other common "xiancai/咸菜"  pickled mustard green. I'm actually using the Yunnan one we have in our fridge, so you can just use whatever pickled mustard green that's available to you, there's not much limit here.

4. Bamboo shoot. 70 grams.
You can use canned ones, no problem. It's mostly for the crunch.

5. Lean pork. 50 grams.

6. Three fresh shiitake mushroom stems removed.

7. One egg.

8. One stalk of green garlic, use the leaves.

 **Process**  

1. Let's prep the ingredients.
a.  cut the pork into slivers, marinate with 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp corn starch, 1/2 tsp soy sauce, and 1/2 tsp Liaojiu, aka. Shaoxing Wine. Mix well and set aside, let it marinate for 15 mins while you prep other ingredients.
b. cut the pickled mustard green into 1-inch sections if yours is in big pieces. (Usually, store-bought ones are pre-minced, which is what I'm using here)
c. cut bamboo shoot into 1cm*5cm strips.
d. remove mushroom stems, cut them into same-size strips as bamboo shoots.
e. take the green leave of green garlic, cut them into 2-inch sections.
f. whisk the egg, and make egg strips, Please refer to the Singaporean rice noodle video here.
g. cut the tofu into 1-inch cubes. 

(Ingredients prepped)

2. Now all the ingredients are prepped, we can start cooking. We need to fry the rice cake. Note that although this dish has soup, it's considered a "stir-fried rice cake" because the rice cake is slightly charred at first.
So first, long yau. Get your wok pipping hot, shot off the heat, add in 3 tbsp of oil, give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface. Then, heat on medium, add in the rice cake, arrange it into an even layer, let it sit and fry. Move the wok for more even heat distribution.  

3. Fry the rice cake on medium for 2 minutes, grab a coupe to see if it starts getting slightly charred. Flip and fry the other side once you got some char on one side. Keep doing so until you got some nice brown bits on the rice cake. Then take them out and set aside.

(Some charred bit that we're looking for.)

4. No need to clean the wok, it should still be non-stick (rice cake surprisingly doesn't stick onto the wok when frying). Heat on medium, add in pork slivers and quickly spread them into an even layer. Let it cook for about half a minute, flip and fry the other side once it's set, give it another half a minute to fry.

(Side A)

(Side B)

5. Once the pork's changed color, add in the pickled vegetables, give it a quick stir. Then add in the mushroom, again stir. Then in the bamboo shoots, give it another stir. And then, swirl in a tbsp of Liaojiu, aka. Shaoxing Wine, quick mix.

(Swirl in some Liaojiu, aka. Shaoxing Wine once the mixed vegs are in.)

6. Add in two and half a cup water, bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about two minutes, let the flavors mingle a bit.

(Simmer on medium)

7. After two minutes of simmering, add in the tofu cubes and the rice cake, gently stir and mix well. Now let it simmer for another couple minutes until the soup thickens up a bit.

(Start simmering with tofu and rice cake)

8. After 2-3 minutes of simmering, the soup should thicken a bit because of the rice cake cooking in it. Depends on the type of the rice cake, it may not thicken as much as the picture is shown here (e.g. the Korean ones tends to just stay intact for long cooking time), which is fine, you can add in a slurry of 2 tsp corn starch + 1tbsp water to thicken as well.

(After 3 minutes, the soup thickens up and gets a bit cloudy)

9. Now that the soup is thickened, we can add in the egg strips and the green garlic. Give it a quick mix and season with 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp sugar, a sprinkle white pepper and optionally a touch MSG. Then heat off, and out.

(Egg strips and green garlic in. Then season.)

(And... out)

This soothing and satisfying rice cake dish is best served hot as the soup may become a bit gloopy if sitting for too long.

So right, this is our first Patron dish for 2020, hope you have a great year ahead!

See you next week.