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The smell is sweet, and wafting with roastiness (made up word?), not bitter, not burnt. Not yet anyway. If you are going to space out while cooking and forget about the full-throttle-boiling pot on the stove, this is the one concoction that can spare you an ensuing tizzy of a charred stench filling your kitchen and the need to turn on fans and open windows wildly to clear the air. It is really hard, turns out, to screw up Congee.
The initial alert will be a smoky, toasted rice scent, as the milky liquid flows over the edge of the pot and reaches the stove’s flame. Your congee is gently calling you to run and rescue. If you space out this signal too, you will get burnt rice, and back to the end of paragraph one…fans, windows!
The worst overspill incident I ever had left me with a flamboyant scene of dried rice water trails on the stainless steel, a massive, translucent octopus to behold. Still, I didn’t manage to ruin the congee. It was mostly theatrics. On days when I want to bypass the drama, I use the quiet wonder of a slow cooker that has been one of the best gifts I got in 2014. You can find me tediously doing close to infomercials about the benefits of the slow cooker to my friends, like a 1960’s homemaker peddling off the latest improvement-to-living technology.
The recipe is simple, or I should clear up, my recipe is simple:
2 cups of rice
4 quarts of water
2 hours (minimum, the more the better) in a large pot on high/medium high boil, making sure to replenish the water level and stir every half hour or so to prevent sticking to the bottom.
You can start with leftover cooked rice or preferably, for a creamier outcome, uncooked rice – jasmine being my current favorite.
Add 2 vegetable bullion cubes, dried mushrooms, and a liberal amount of fresh ginger slices, during the rice’s initial boil.
Separate this final product into small batches in the fridge and some in the freezer to use and finish dressing up/seasoning later. This way each soup offshoot diverges from its parent congee base and is prepared on demand depending on your mood, and you won't get bored with a one-note taste.
Congee is one of the cheapest foods in the world. A simple, smooth porridge that can be as decked out as you want – like when I lay a slab of Alaska King Salmon in the mix at the last minute for a tender and rich protein jolt – or as humble as you want: maybe some shredded zucchini, a dropped egg, white pepper, and some cilantro or basil. It is what you add to this beautiful rice porridge base that counts, although the fact that it is a beautiful rice porridge base, I suppose, is the important start. It is a clean, well-stretched, white canvas.
Then there is the lure of the Maggi, or the Gift of the Maggi, as we have been calling it lately. I try to go easy on this brown liquid of über-yumness because of the possible yuck ingredients – like caramel color – it may contain (It is no longer made with MSG, luckily.). But man, is it addictive! You can really use some Maggi umami for a good congee. The umami taste became all the rage a few years back. It was one of those incidences in life: you never heard it before, and then all of a sudden, it is everywhere – like the multi-colored, many-charactered Silly Bandz or like the hipster Moscow Mules and their shiny, all-copper mugs (The epitome of omnipresence was when I found a Silly Bandz bracelet amid the beach algae while doing shore clean up for Save The Bay one Saturday morning. Seriously.). Never saw them before, then popular but still endearing, and later just ubiquitous and starting to get really annoying. It didn’t help that the word umami sounds a little uhhh-gumby, but maybe that’s just because the first person I heard describe it was Padma on Top Chef. But in reality, the phenomenon is a chemical, crazy reaction with glutamates and nucleotides (yes, I had to look those up) convincing your taste buds that foods are now, thanks to them, richer, brothier, and deeper in flavor. Molecular manipulation.
My solution to relying on additives for this full-bodied fun is to add great types of dried mushrooms to the boiling rice early on in the process. Any work really well: dried Portobello, Shiitake, Oyster… whichever are the least obnoxiously expensive at the Whole Paycheck. In a pinch, you can use sliced, fresh brown mushrooms.
Why congee? Why the close personal relationship and reverence?
For one, it is delicious.
And, it came at a time when Jimmy was convalescing from surgery for a ravaging, but benign tumor. I, thankfully, was home that summer still on scholarship, finishing my degree at UC Berkeley in 2008, and able to serve as chef and caregiver when he came home from the hospital. Surgeries…that year, and in 2010, and in 2011. How did we survive? The idea of nursing someone back from bodily rampage and IVs and ice chips to actual meals was daunting. Later, when I was diagnosed in early 2014 with an esophageal dysfunction preventing me from eating properly, congee was there to rescue us again, as my acupuncturist predicted. Being able to stomach a meal is a miracle. Seeing Jimmy recover into a marathon running, happy East-Bay-Hills-climbing billy goat is a miracle. Jimmy and I have had many beautiful parallels in the 26 years that we have loved each other, but these temporary brushes with the inability to nourish ourselves are the unhappiest of common denominators.
The sorrows of the digestive system.
So this is my little ode to the congee. Not every meal, but the stabilizer when you need it – like a harried kid calling the nearest tree “base” to be able to have some sanctuary to touch, and a reprieve from mayhem during a playground game of tag. We have been through a lot, but we have learned to look for our literal or figurative base – love shared, glimmers of faith and hope, or a simple meal – always there to protect us.
The initial alert will be a smoky, toasted rice scent, as the milky liquid flows over the edge of the pot and reaches the stove’s flame. Your congee is gently calling you to run and rescue. If you space out this signal too, you will get burnt rice, and back to the end of paragraph one…fans, windows!
The worst overspill incident I ever had left me with a flamboyant scene of dried rice water trails on the stainless steel, a massive, translucent octopus to behold. Still, I didn’t manage to ruin the congee. It was mostly theatrics. On days when I want to bypass the drama, I use the quiet wonder of a slow cooker that has been one of the best gifts I got in 2014. You can find me tediously doing close to infomercials about the benefits of the slow cooker to my friends, like a 1960’s homemaker peddling off the latest improvement-to-living technology.
The recipe is simple, or I should clear up, my recipe is simple:
2 cups of rice
4 quarts of water
2 hours (minimum, the more the better) in a large pot on high/medium high boil, making sure to replenish the water level and stir every half hour or so to prevent sticking to the bottom.
You can start with leftover cooked rice or preferably, for a creamier outcome, uncooked rice – jasmine being my current favorite.
Add 2 vegetable bullion cubes, dried mushrooms, and a liberal amount of fresh ginger slices, during the rice’s initial boil.
Separate this final product into small batches in the fridge and some in the freezer to use and finish dressing up/seasoning later. This way each soup offshoot diverges from its parent congee base and is prepared on demand depending on your mood, and you won't get bored with a one-note taste.
Congee is one of the cheapest foods in the world. A simple, smooth porridge that can be as decked out as you want – like when I lay a slab of Alaska King Salmon in the mix at the last minute for a tender and rich protein jolt – or as humble as you want: maybe some shredded zucchini, a dropped egg, white pepper, and some cilantro or basil. It is what you add to this beautiful rice porridge base that counts, although the fact that it is a beautiful rice porridge base, I suppose, is the important start. It is a clean, well-stretched, white canvas.
Then there is the lure of the Maggi, or the Gift of the Maggi, as we have been calling it lately. I try to go easy on this brown liquid of über-yumness because of the possible yuck ingredients – like caramel color – it may contain (It is no longer made with MSG, luckily.). But man, is it addictive! You can really use some Maggi umami for a good congee. The umami taste became all the rage a few years back. It was one of those incidences in life: you never heard it before, and then all of a sudden, it is everywhere – like the multi-colored, many-charactered Silly Bandz or like the hipster Moscow Mules and their shiny, all-copper mugs (The epitome of omnipresence was when I found a Silly Bandz bracelet amid the beach algae while doing shore clean up for Save The Bay one Saturday morning. Seriously.). Never saw them before, then popular but still endearing, and later just ubiquitous and starting to get really annoying. It didn’t help that the word umami sounds a little uhhh-gumby, but maybe that’s just because the first person I heard describe it was Padma on Top Chef. But in reality, the phenomenon is a chemical, crazy reaction with glutamates and nucleotides (yes, I had to look those up) convincing your taste buds that foods are now, thanks to them, richer, brothier, and deeper in flavor. Molecular manipulation.
My solution to relying on additives for this full-bodied fun is to add great types of dried mushrooms to the boiling rice early on in the process. Any work really well: dried Portobello, Shiitake, Oyster… whichever are the least obnoxiously expensive at the Whole Paycheck. In a pinch, you can use sliced, fresh brown mushrooms.
Why congee? Why the close personal relationship and reverence?
For one, it is delicious.
And, it came at a time when Jimmy was convalescing from surgery for a ravaging, but benign tumor. I, thankfully, was home that summer still on scholarship, finishing my degree at UC Berkeley in 2008, and able to serve as chef and caregiver when he came home from the hospital. Surgeries…that year, and in 2010, and in 2011. How did we survive? The idea of nursing someone back from bodily rampage and IVs and ice chips to actual meals was daunting. Later, when I was diagnosed in early 2014 with an esophageal dysfunction preventing me from eating properly, congee was there to rescue us again, as my acupuncturist predicted. Being able to stomach a meal is a miracle. Seeing Jimmy recover into a marathon running, happy East-Bay-Hills-climbing billy goat is a miracle. Jimmy and I have had many beautiful parallels in the 26 years that we have loved each other, but these temporary brushes with the inability to nourish ourselves are the unhappiest of common denominators.
The sorrows of the digestive system.
So this is my little ode to the congee. Not every meal, but the stabilizer when you need it – like a harried kid calling the nearest tree “base” to be able to have some sanctuary to touch, and a reprieve from mayhem during a playground game of tag. We have been through a lot, but we have learned to look for our literal or figurative base – love shared, glimmers of faith and hope, or a simple meal – always there to protect us.
What Happens to Rice Around Here Lately
Focus Photo-A-Day Project, Day 188
https://www.flickr.com/photos/22996143@N06/13175630545/in/set-72157635454973907
Focus Photo-A-Day Project, Day 188
https://www.flickr.com/photos/22996143@N06/13175630545/in/set-72157635454973907