I was ready for the year and having missed COVID so far, it struck and I’ve been out of action for the last 2 weeks but now recovering.
Happy lunar New Year. I was still sick so no major feasting or cooking, I ended up making congee. This rice porridge is soothing. For me, it’s not only the throat soothing properties but the memory congee invokes of my Mum making it for me when ill and young. Food is wrapped up in our memories and culture. We seldom eat only in isolation.
Whenever I eat durian, I always recall my father’s Ipoh house where I first smelled the fruit and called the durian the perfume fruit - to the laughter and astonishment of my father’s family and a nickname that stuck with it whenever I came by.
What food evokes is intertwined with our culture and what it means to be human.
Back on congee, it seems it was a dish made as far back as 1000 BCE according to wiki/SCMP and Pliny (the elder) wrote about is in his account of India c. AD 77. The word congee derives from proto-Tamil Indian language.
According to this food writer, Dash:
Pliny The Elder who in his accounts extols the virtue of the Indian Congee/ Kanji served in the ports to weary sailors, called it the “powerhouse that can build or break a nation.” Upholding Congee as one of the brightest culinary idea of the time, Pliny had observed that such was the prowess of the dish that it can in its evolution help mankind evolve too. His object of obsession was the rice gruel – a easily available, popular one pot meal then – which had already conquered complete Asia and was influencing the porridges across the seas as well.
Dash goes on to suggest many chefs favour it at the end of a long service and extols the virtues of its versalitliy and also a “equality” about the dish. Kings to foot soldiers will all eat congee and have a sense of belonging from it.
I’m unsure if I’d go quite so far, but maybe - like an “English” breakfast in the UK, a congee is so universal that perhaps it’s true.
Regardless, it’s definitely something I feel soothing even if it’s not a typical New Year dish! If you’ve never tried making congee you should give it a go! It’s hardly a recipe…
Congee recipe
Overnight left over rice
Stock or water (with stock cube)
Chicken, spring onion or other topping
Place the leftover rice in enough stock to genrously cover it. Gentlly simmer for 10-15 minutes or when the rice has broken up into a thick soup quality, only a touch of texture left. You can add mushroom, chicken or whatever you have or leave it plain. Salted or preserved eggs go well as well. Water is fine, but half a stock cube or some stock gives it a deeper richness. I often poach an egg in the soup and finish with some soy sauce and spring onions.