Sticky Rice Cakes
As much as I love food, it embarrasses me to admit that I am not an adventurous eater. The slick texture of stir-fried noodles is off putting to me; I find the herbal smell of bay leaves nauseating; I pick out peas from pot pie filling.
Unsurprisingly, one of my favorite desserts is only composed of two (ish) ingredients: palitaw. These sticky rice cakes were the first Filipino food I learned to make on my own - with only a few inexpensive ingredients, it quickly became a way for me to connect with my culture while living away from home. On rainy Friday afternoons, me and my auntie would stand at the kitchen table, hands coated in flour as we worked with the soft and sticky dough. If we were feeling fancy (or especially homesick), she would cut off swaths of leaves from her banana tree and char them over the stove to use as plates, a sweet smell faintly filling the kitchen as their green surface turned brown and glossy with heat.
When she taught me to make them on my own, she instructed me to do the following:
Mix glutinous rice flour and water until the dough “feels right”. It should be slightly sticky.
Roll the dough into small balls and flatten into disks.
Place into boiling water and let sit until the disks begin to float.
Coat in butter and the toppings of your choice - I prefer sugar or coconut shavings.
The whole process is very unspecific - “feels right” isn’t the most descriptive way of phrasing texture, and neither is “small” as a metric for size. Regardless of minor fluctuations in the recipe, palitaw is a dish that is difficult to get wrong. Even my more questionable attempts have resulted in a delightfully chewy, soft texture; so simple and so, so good.
Ironically, I’m the kind of person who gets caught up in dissecting minutiae, obsessing over details over and over until I lose sight of the big picture. I catch myself thinking that what’s easy must be suspicious - that for some strange reason, it must be wrong somehow.
Food is what helps me prove myself wrong over and over again. Palitaw is a sticky-sweet reminder to me that what’s easy can also be layered, delicious, and delightful. With just a few ingredients, you’re left with something both soft and crispy, buttery and light, nutty and sweet. Most of all, it sings with the delightful flavor of simplicity.