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kake
As I mentioned on Wednesday, 粥 is the Chinese character for congee, or rice porridge, and one of the most popular styles of congee is congee with lean pork and preserved egg — 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pí dàn shòu ròu zhǒu).
I discussed preserved egg (皮蛋/pí dàn) in my post on 蛋/dàn/egg last week. Otherwise known as "century eggs" or "thousand-year-old eggs", 皮蛋 can be something of an acquired taste; Fuchsia Dunlop suggests thinking of them as the Chinese equivalent of blue cheese (though I would say that fermented tofu/腐乳/fǔ rǔ is perhaps a better claimant to that title).
The basic idea of congee is simple; rice is cooked for a long time in a large quantity of water until it breaks down and forms a thick porridge. Possible flavourings include pork/chicken stock, soy sauce, meat, eggs, herbs, and so on. It's a savoury dish, often eaten for breakfast, and commonly found on old-school dim sum menus. It's also a very comforting thing to eat if you're ill (or hungover).
To make the congee shown above, I adapted Helen Yuet Ling Pang's congee recipe. I cooked 100g jasmine rice in 1 litre of vegetable stock along with a splash of soy sauce. After it had been simmering for around 45 minutes, I added two chopped 皮蛋 along with 100g pork which I'd earlier cut into 1cm pieces and marinaded with cornflour, soy sauce, black vinegar, and white pepper; that got another 15 minutes' cooking and then it was ready to eat.
(Purists will complain about my use of vegetable stock and soy sauce in the above. I'll admit that they made it harder to get a decent colour balance in the photograph!)
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Date: 2010-09-25 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-25 08:39 pm (UTC)