Every year, in the second half of the twelfth lunar month, every household will make glutinous rice into Spring Festival Ciba, which is also an indispensable food for the Spring Festival and a widely spread custom in rural areas in southern China.
At first, pure glutinous rice was cooked into comfortable glutinous rice and then poured into a stone mortar. Many strong men hammer glutinous rice into fine glutinous rice cakes with wooden hammers, and then women make them into round flat rice cakes with a diameter of five or six inches, and put them aside to dry and harden for taking. People who rub Ciba should apply a thin layer of pale yellow liquid paraffin oil on their palms to prevent their hands from getting wet.
Making Spring Festival Ciba is a theme activity of group cooperation, which generally requires multi-person cooperation. In the whole production process, several people often cooperate, men, women and children play together, which is very lively and children inevitably join in.
The delicate glutinous rice that has just been shaken off and has not been kneaded releases the fragrance of wooden bucket meal. I squeezed a small piece and tasted it. It was really sweet and refreshing. The fragrance is also deeply rooted in my body. I feel instantly back to my childhood. I still remember that this delicious glutinous rice cake was my favorite food during the Spring Festival.
This is also a festival full of joy and celebration, which is a representative of everyone's food and clothing after a year of hard work. Therefore, after the news of which family is going to celebrate the Spring Festival came out, the villagers were very happy and happy, especially the children, running around telling each other.
After drying, the rice cake is a bit hard and can't be bitten. In the era of handmade Ciba, people used a big crock to store Ciba, filled it with edible alkali filtered from key wood ash, and soaked it in edible alkali, which could be stored for three or four months. Now it is made of mechanical equipment, and this kind of Ciba can achieve the same practical storage effect by vacuum preservation.
There are many ways to eat Bazin, such as slicing, slicing, steaming, boiling and frying, and making it salty or sweet according to my hobby.
With the change of years, although the scene of eating Ciba in the New Year has never appeared again, as a traditional gift box for new year's goods, in other words, Ciba is still a delicious food on the Chinese New Year table in the southern countryside.