Fate works in weird ways. A couple days ago I was sure the inaugural blog post of Fancy Frites would feature ‘Sugar Rush’, a fundraising event where San Francisco’s best pastry chefs work their magic benefiting the Spark Foundation, an organization that pairs real working professionals with kids at risk dropping out from school.
As fate would have it, I caught the cold, got a sore throat and had to bail. An aggressive 12 hour sleep later I feel somewhat human again. Today I needed some food and sought out to make some Congee, or as the Cantonese call it – ‘Jook’. Rice porridge. It’s allegedly an extremely popular food in Asia for breakfast but I cannot confirm since I’m an ABC (American Born Chinese) Banana. I busted out the Frosted Flakes and milk instead in my childhood while my parents went to work. I’ve only ever had it once when I sought it out in Hong Kong, but even then I usually went to the Cha Chaan Tengs (Hong Kong ‘Western Style’ Restaurnts) for breakfast and got a fixing of macaroni and processed ham with milk tea – that’s another post though.
In my family, Congee always made an appearance as a lighter meal after some heavy feasting to ‘clear the stomach and intestines’ as the Chinese like to say it. It also makes always makes an appearance when somebody is sick. It’s easily digestible and incredibly soothing.
I see congee in two ways. ‘Mom’ style and ‘Restaurant’ Style. Mom style is usually chunkier, thicker, uses plain water as base and relies on condiments which would include bamboo shoots, gluten balls, peanuts etc. Whatever you want really. I’m pretty partial to this style. My dad, a chef, would always prepar it restaurant style which is more ‘fluffy and creamier’. It’s higher in water to rice ratio, uses a stock as a base and the rice is very finely broken up with a creamy texture. This is what I prefer. You really can do whatever you want. Some classics are raw fish congee, 1000 year old egg + pork congee, some kinda internal organ meat congee and more. I love them all. My go to is always Chicken Congee when I’m sick though.
In an ideal world, you would have chicken stock prepared, use long grain rice and soak it over night. I did not have an ideal night and given my current living situation, having some frozen chicken stock is definitely a luxury.
Chicken Congee from yours truly
Here’s my quick and dirty way of doing it on the fly.
- 5oz rice
- 5-8 parts of water to rice (depends how thick you want your congee really)
- Chicken legs/Chicken Thighs/Boneless Chicken Thighs.. whatever. I used four chicken thighs – boneless. Not ideal though. You really want the bone and skin for more flavour. The grocery store didn’t have any 🙁
- Chicken stock base (Yes, there’s MSG in here. No it’s not really stock. Yes it tastes a bit ‘fake’. Sue me. I’m sick and I don’t care as long as it tastes good.)
- Soak the rice in hot water for at least an hour.
- While that is soaking, poach the chicken legs. Use the water for the rice, bring it to a rolling boil. Pop the legs in and boil for 3 minutes. Bring it down to a very slow simmer and poach the meat, takes about 15 minutes. Check for doneness and put legs in a cold water bath to keep it juicy and tender. Debone and de-skin. The water now is your impromptu ‘stock’. It’s pretty weak, but hey, it’s better than nothing.
- Recycle this ‘stock’ and bring to rolling boil again, dump the water of your rice and pop it in the stock. You can lower the heat down a little but you always must keep the rice moving!! Otherwise it gets stuck on the bottom of the bowl and your life is ruined. 45 to 60 minutes. If it looks like running low in the water department, get some boiling hot water and add it in. Again, if you use cold water, it will stop the rice from moving and it will stick. At this point, I usually use some chicken stock base and pop it in to give the fake ‘stock’ some more flavour.
- Grab a whisk and whisk the congee until the rice breaks up and looks really fluffy. Turn off the heat.
- Heat up the chicken in the microwave and put it inn the bowl to serve, put congee in.
- To serve: Diced Green Onions, julienned ginger, dash of white pepper, sesame oil, fish sauce to liking.
