“Miqiba (米糍粑)” is commonly known as Hakka sticky rice cake. While most sticky rice cakes have the stuffing packed inside, the Hakka ones are eaten with sesame powder and peanut powder stuck on the outside. It is snack eaten by Hakka people on ordinary days as well as when guests visit or during weddings, funerals and temple worshipping.

In the early days in Hakka villages, during every wedding, funeral or celebration, neighbors would visit, and everyone would work together to put the steamed glutinous rice into a wooden or stone mortar and beat it with pestles. The glutinous rice is very sticky and often stretches continuously, which means long and permanent. The Hakka villagers made and shared the sticky rice cakes together, and in the process of making the snack, the tacit understanding and cohesiveness between the Hakkas were enhanced.

The most common way to eat sticky rice cakes is to divide the rice cake into small pieces and directly dip it into peanut powder. In the early Hakka agricultural society, the rice is made into a round and flat shape, with a dimple in the middle, put into a bowl with brown sugar and ginger juice and then sprinkled with a little chopped peanut to add aroma. It’s a common snack between meals when farmers are busy in the fields. Because the sticky rice cakes placed in a bowl with brown sugar and ginger juice resemble cows soaking in water to cool off, only revealing their head above the surface of the water, the snacks were called "Niu Wen Shui" (牛汶水).

Niu Wen Shui

Ingredients:

Sticky rice cakes, ginger juice, brown sugar, coarse peanut powder

Cooking method:

1. Take a NT$50 coin-sized sticky rice cake, and use your thumb to flatten the middle into a hole.

2. After cooking it until it floats in a pot of boiling water, remove the sticky rice cakes and put them in a bowl filled with sweet ginger syrup.

3. Add coarse peanut powder on top of each sticky rice cake.