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First things first — happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
This week's character isn't related to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but it is tangentially related to one of last week's characters, 蛋/dàn/egg. 粥 (zhǒu) is the Chinese character for congee (rice porridge), and one of the most popular ways of serving it is with pork and century egg — 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pí dàn shòu ròu zhǒu). Note the 瘦 (shòu) character here — this indicates that the pork (肉/ròu) is of the lean variety, rather than the fattier cuts that are used in many other Chinese dishes.
Here are some other flavours of congee I've seen listed on menus:
生魚片粥 | shēng yú piàn zhǒu | congee with sliced fish (生/shēng usually means "fresh" or "raw" in the context of a menu — here, it most likely means that the fish is added in at the last minute so it doesn't get overcooked) |
滑牛肉粥 | huá niú ròu zhǒu | beef congee (滑/huá means "smooth/slippery", and I'm not sure what it indicates in this context) |
滑雞粥 | huá jī zhǒu | chicken congee |
豬紅粥 | zhū hóng zhǒu | pig's blood congee (literally "pig's red congee") — the translation on the menu was the rather euphemistic "Chinese red pudding congee" |
蠔仔肉碎粥 | háo zǐ ròu suì zhǒu | baby oyster and minced pork congee |
Finally, while rice congee is the most common type of congee in Chinese cuisines, it's sometimes made from other grains, particularly in the north of China where rice is less of a staple food than in other regions. For example, Baozi Inn, a small Northern Chinese restaurant in London's Chinatown, offers 小米粥 (xiǎo mǐ zhǒu) — literally "small [小] grain [米] porridge [粥]" — which is made from millet.
粥: | zhǒu | radical 119 (米) | Cantodict | MandarinTools | YellowBridge | Zhongwen |
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