Happy New Year!

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Something's been percolating in the back of my mind for a while, and it being new year's brought it to the fore, so -

See, we don't speak a lick of chinese in our house. Not mandarin, not canto, not shanghai dialect. When Grandma came over, it was all about assimilation, and then mom was saddled with the model minority shebang, and by our generation, we're just. here. Technically asian, mostly american.
But the thing is, there's been a huge uptick of chinese presence in the bay area since then. Mainland and taiwan alike, as well as other asian groups. It used to be we had to go to the chinese neighborhoods to get bao, and now there's competing bakeries and tea shops in all of my spheres. International students are hanging out with first-gen peers and everyone's chatting in their first language, and part of me wishes I had that. A very massive, huge part of me. But you know what? The asian-american kids now get to have it. We all get to look around and see our own folks right here, we don't have to find enclaves. The bay area is turning into our enclave, altogether. We're getting to exist, more and more.
And sure yes, things are beyond not perfect, but for now, for today, I want to focus on being grateful.

Relatedly, I made nian gao for the first time! I had to teach myself, but you know what, I did it, we have it. I didn't follow one set recipe, but read a bunch and did what felt right, in the greatest tradition of 'make what you have work': (NB that this takes 2 hours on the stove, and cooled in my fridge overnight to set)

• A pound bag of rice flour. I used glutinous, because that's what we had, but I might do 50-50 sweet and glutinous next time, for more structure.
• About 1.25 c brown sugar, plus molasses for color
• About 2 c water
• 2 tbs oil - some folks talk vegetable oil, some people are into a drop of sesame, I went with coconut because we've got those branches back in taiwan yeaaa
• and an egg and some flour, for finishing

1. melt the oil and sugar in water in a 4-cup saucepan, along with a tablespoon or so of molasses. It doesn't need to come to a boil, this isn't about syrup.
2. measure out your flour
3. take the saucepan off heat
4. slowly start to whisk in the flour. If it gets thicker than a choux, slowly add hot water. Imagine the top of the nian gao - it shouldn't be lumpy when you pour it into the mold.
5. does it need more molasses, is it red enough? do you want almond? sesame? what floats your boat?
6. Brush the inside of your tin with oil and steam for two hours. Now, everyone's going on about instant pot and cheesecake liners, but it's just me and the stovetop here, so I ended up molding a sheet of tin foil into shape, based on a bowl, to do the whole batch at once in my little steamer basket. Turns out that was a good idea, because the nian gao absolutely did not want to release, and you can't peel off a springmold or anything. I also made the mistake of not keeping the condensation off of the cake itself, and it puffed up alarmingly. But then I let it finish for a few minutes with the lid off after two hours, and it dropped down.
7. And after cooling overnight, it's perfect! Fry that up in a thin batter - one egg, a spoonful of flour, and just a pinch of salt was enough to cover about half of the slices of finished cake.