Rice pudding (年糕) delicacy won't dethrone king

Rice pudding, a traditional Chinese delicacy on the Lunar New Year table, is expected to see a strong boost in sales this year, but will continue to lag mooncake as the No 1 festival food in Hong Kong.
For the past month, staff at Wing Wah Cake Shop's kitchen in Yuen Long have been working day and night to mix rice flour with various ingredients, steam it, package the pudding and then deliver them to its 40 shops and restaurants across the city.

Wing Wah is expecting rice pudding sales to show double-digit growth this year but says mooncake - with industry-wide sales of around HK$700 million a year - will remain the king of festive cakes.

Food has been always been at the core of Chinese festival culture. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, mooncake is a must-have snack that represents family reunion. At the Dragon Boat Festival, people are accustomed to eating rice dumplings as a way to commemorate the ancient poet Qu Yuan, who died for his nation.

Rice pudding, also known as rice cake, is considered an auspicious food to consume at Lunar New Year. Its Chinese name is nian gao in Putonghua or nin gou in Cantonese. Nian is "year" or also "sticky", while gao is "cake". Together they indicate a wish for a "higher year" ahead.

Although the three major Chinese festival foods are equal in cultural value, they vary greatly in commercial value.

Wing Wah general manager Lee Ying-kuen said rice pudding generated less revenue than mooncake due to the keen competition among cake makers and the food's shorter shelf life.

He explained that making rice pudding was simpler and involved fewer ingredients than mooncake, so many small bakeries and also housewives would also make supplies.

"At this time every year, you can find rice pudding sold in every corner of the city, from street shops, restaurants to big hotels," Lee said. "We cannot expect it to generate sales volumes as big as mooncakes, which are only available at big bakeries and  hotels."

Rice pudding usually can only be stored for a month in a refrigerator, whereas the shelf life of mooncake is as long as two months. "This is important if we want to develop the overseas market," Lee said.

Wing Wah's mooncakes are sold in Europe, the United States and Australia, and are also available throughout the year at its counter in the Hong Kong International Airport. But rice pudding is only produced for the Hong Kong market.

The city's largest catering group, Maxim's, says Lunar New Year is the second-biggest festival food market.

Maxim's sells mooncake in more than 80 locations around the world, but this year for the first time it will promote its Hong Kong-made rice pudding outside the city. Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Foshan have been chosen as the first batch of cities to sell the products.

Angela Chan, Maxim's branded products manager, said the turnover of rice pudding would increase this year due to bigger demand in Hong Kong and the new market across the border. But the group did not expect sales to exceed mooncake sales.

"It's hard in terms of the demand and value," Chan said. "A box of mooncake is priced at HK$200 on average," yet rice cake usually sells for between HK$30 to HK$100.

Even so, retailers have gone to great effort to innovate, with new pudding flavours and packing in order to attract more buyers.

In addition to the traditional turnip, taro and coconut pudding, novel products being marketed this year include "bird nest" pudding from Wing Wah, durian-flavoured pudding from Taipan Bread and Cakes, and Hello Kitty-shaped cakes from Maxim's. Some retailers are also following the green trend and packing their products in boxes that can be reused instead of vacuum-sealed plastic bags.

Designer-turned-cook Xu Yuan is trying to turn the annual delicacy into art. Saying traditional rice pudding is "boring", Xu started to apply her imagination to the cakes six years ago.

This year, about 100 of Xu's puddings were snapped up by friends and customers at her restaurant in Wan Chai a couple of weeks before the Lunar New Year. The most popular ones are "star pudding" and "tiger pudding", which feature colourful stars and tiger skin patterns with carrot, water chestnut, sesame and other ingredients - all from Xu's own organic farm in the New Territories.

Xu has stuck to tradition, using a stone grinder to produce the rice flour and firewood to steam the pudding which, she said, creates a much better taste.

As a result her products are more expensive, ranging from HK$200 to HK$350 each.

"Honestly, I cannot make much money from this since it takes too much time," Xu said. "For me, it's a statement of my food philosophy rather than a business."

A lover of traditional food since her childhood, she said the little cakes always reminded her of happy moments celebrating the festival with her family.

"Although my puddings are fancy in appearance, their flavour is 100 per cent traditional. I think people love this traditional flavour because they do love the warm feeling of sharing with their loved ones," she said.

SCMP. Feb 13, 2010.