Xianwu Temple Back Grandma's Rice Cake Introduction
In Keelung, returning hometown youths will undoubtedly visit Shun Tian Temple and then look for A-Po to enjoy a bowl of A-Po's rice pudding served with meat soup, alleviating their homesickness. Many people in Keelung have been eating A-Po's rice pudding since they were elementary school students. As they grow up and move to other places for study or work, they will bring their families back to enjoy the dish, sharing with the younger generations that this is the A-Po's rice pudding that they have missed while living away from home. A-Po, whose full name is Li Hsieh Chih-Hua (born in 1939), originally worked as a farmer. During the off-seasons, she would sell miscellaneous goods by car. With relatives running businesses in the market, they encouraged her to set up a stall there, which would be less tiring, and that is how she began cooking and selling rice pudding. The ingredients for A-Po's rice pudding include: shallots, preserved eggs, pork, and traditional rice. The preparation method is as follows: 1. Sauté pork, shallots, and fried shallots in a pot until fragrant, and set aside. 2. Grind the traditional rice into a rice paste and dilute it with boiling water. 3. Place the sautéed pork and preserved eggs into a bowl, then pour in the diluted rice paste, and steam until cooked. It is customary to enjoy rice pudding with soup. A-Po's soup was initially made with mullet soup, but due to the scarcity of mullet, it was later changed to meat soup. The preparation of the meat soup involves: blanching the pork and setting it aside, blanching the bok choy, boiling water with tapioca starch, adding the blanched pork and bok choy, bringing it to a boil, and adding seasonings to finish. Meat soup noodles are made by serving cooked oil noodles in a bowl, then ladling...
