No-time-to-make-congee congee

I'm still here! And still eating my congee every day. Finding the time to write about it regularly, however, has gotten more and more challenging in direct proportion to how mobile my small Kamal has gotten.  He's running now, and climbing, and even throwing the occasional full-fledged tantrum--a truly free-range toddler if ever there was one. (He's also giving hugs, telling jokes in his own funny toddler language,  and planting grave, carefully-aimed kisses on my mouth.)

Grave pre-kiss face.

This morning's congee was what I call lazy-day congee, or busy-morning congee. Basically it's congee made with already-cooked rice. It lacks a bit of the silky texture that real congee has, but the speed in coming together makes up for it, and thickened with some whisked egg, even I barely notice the lack. It's not the right choice for congee purists, but on a morning like today's--following a night when my charming child slept basically not at all--it's the difference between congee and no congee.

This is just a gratuitous photo of Kamal sleeping, because I need the reminder that it actually does happen sometimes.

No-Time-To-Make-Congee Congee

(Note: this made way too much for my breakfast and Kamal's. There's a bunch in the fridge I'll reheat for us tomorrow morning.)

About one cup cooked white jasmine rice (or any cooked rice or grain)
About 2 cups chicken stock (or dashi, or beef stock, or whatever stock you have around)
2 large eggs
(For add-ins, use whatever you have available that appeals to you. Here's what I used:)
About half a cup frozen shiitake mushrooms
A handful of shredded chicken pulled off a leftover roast chicken
2 big handfuls of washed fresh baby spinach

In a medium pot, combine rice, stock and mushrooms (and/or any frozen ingredients). Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to medium-high heat,  stirring frequently. After 5 or so minutes, whisk in eggs and continue frequent stirring; the mixture will thicken considerably and become more cohesive. Add in chicken and allow to heat through. Just before serving, stir in spinach until wilted.

That's it! You're done! Dig in. Here's my serving and Kamal's:

And Kamal's reaction: circumspect tasting,

skeptical connoisseurship,

  and finally, begrudging approval.

Mahogany Beef Congee

Adam and I got married in our backyard and it was the best party we've ever thrown.  We had cases and cases of wine and beer and champagne. (We will have our fifth anniversary this May, and we still have some wine left over.) Champagne got opened right as the guests were arriving, and we had half-pint Mason jelly jars for wine and bubbly and pint Mason jars for beer, but somehow nobody found the half-pints, so the party got underway with everybody gleefully drinking PINTS OF CHAMPAGNE.

It was awesome.

photo by Tod Brilliant http://www.todbrilliant.com/

The next day, we discovered lots of opened, mostly-full jugs of red wine. Lots of lots of nice red wine, so much that there was no way we could drink it without it all going bad. We could have thrown a whole other party with all that wine, but we were ready to be not throwing parties the day after our wedding, so instead, Adam remembered that he'd made a recipe--Mahogany Beef Stew--years back that used a lot of red wine. So all the leftover wine went into a couple huge potfuls of the stew, which then went into many quart Mason jars, which then went into our freezer, to be happily remembered, opened and reheated on many busy at-home evenings. And we went off on our honeymoon, free of any guilt over neglected wine.

Last week Adam decided to make me Mahogany Beef Congee. The hoisin sauce in the recipe adds delicious Asian overtones, so turning the stew into a congee felt like a natural fit. Adam adapted the recipe linked above, and prepared the congee essentially as written except that he:

-skipped the cornstarch entirely
-used less beef (a little over two pounds, instead of the three-and-a-half pounds called for in the original recipe)
-added about 6 tbsps of fresh minced ginger (4-6 inches), and
-added about 2-3 tbsps of fresh minced garlic (3-5 cloves)

He started on the stovetop, heating olive oil in a large pan and searing the beef on all sides on medium high, being careful not to crowd the pan (you can do this in batches if your pan isn't big enough). As the beef came out of the pan, he lightly salted and peppered it. You can salt it before it goes in to the pan too, but don't pepper it till it comes out, because pepper will burn.

Once the beef was out of the pan, he reduced the heat to medium and cooked the onions in the same pan for about 15 minutes; in the last couple of minutes he added the ginger and garlic to the pan. Then he mixed the beef back in, and then added everything else except the carrots from the recipe, and let it all cook, covered, on the stovetop for one and a half to two hours, until the beef was very tender. (Note: This cooking time was longer than in the original recipe.)

He then put the stew in the fridge and went to bed.

The next morning, he added the stew to our big 10-cup rice pot with about two and a half cups of washed white jasmine rice, another cup of wine, the carrots, and enough water to fill the pot, and switched the rice cooker on.

Here's what it looked like the first day I ate it, when I came back from an early morning meeting to a house filled with a rich, winey, gingery fragrance that reminded me of those first giddy days of being married to the kind of man who will make winey, gingery congee for me:

And here's what it looked like the second day, topped with a perfect soft-boiled egg:

This recipe made enough for me to eat it for breakfast every day for about ten days, but I liked it so much I ate it for lunch, too, so it only lasted about five.

I'm one of those people who can eat the same meal ten times in five days and not get bored, especially if I add different vegetables to it each time. If you're not one of those people, though, this freezes beautifully. Just pull out and heat up a portion whenever you're feening for real, heartwarming-but-not-heavy comfort food.

Congee to go

Today I woke up at 5, Kamal woke up at 6, and I had a meeting at 7. With no time to eat breakfast before my meeting, I put hot bai zhou in a pint Mason jar and topped it with sauteed chopped green beans and shiitake mushrooms, an egg cooked over-easy in coconut oil, a little tamari, and a little hot chili sesame oil. Screwed the lid on, threw it (along with another pint Mason jar full of tea) into my giant purse, kissed Kamal and Adam goodbye, and was out the door with my good-to-go breakfast. 

All aboard the congee train: Guest post by Jenjen!

Jenjen and I have been friends since I was 12 and she was 9. Well, we were more like younger sister and older sister; we even still call each other "Meimei" and "Jiejie," the Chinese honorifics that older and younger sisters call each other. I would post a photo from those days, but I was going through a heinously awkward phase and I don't want to subject you to it. (Jenjen was always completely COMPLETELY adorable, though.)

When she moved to New York for graduate school, we became grown-up friends, big-time.  Jenjen (along with our sister-in-spirit, Mayumi) danced a hula with me at my wedding

Photo credit to Mayumi Shimose Poe

and held Kamal when he was a teeny-tiny.

photo credit to Mayumi Shimose Poe

Like me, Jenjen grew up with congee. Here's her lovely piece on her grandmother's congee. 

Jook was never really my comfort food.  I never craved it when I wanted to make myself feel better after a bad day.  When I was a kid, it was what my mom fed me when I was sick.  So naturally, it was always bland because I couldn't taste anything.  On the other hand, Turkey Jook is a whole different ballgame to me.  

Every Thanksgiving, I would look forward to the post-feast meals almost more than the actual meal itself.  My popo (grandmother) would transform the turkey carcass and meal remnants into this lovely rich broth that would take center stage in an incredibly luxurious jook.  But, it wasn't just about ravenously devouring bowls of that jook with my family; it was about my alone time with my popo while we made it together.

My popo was one of my biggest influences in my early childhood.  Instead of hiring childcare while my parents worked, she was my secondary caregiver.  And she'd regale me with stories of her own childhood, where she worked in the Hawaii sugar cane plantation fields, while she kept me busy with yard work or kitchen duty.  So now, I frequently look back to her kitchen time life lessons when I'm in my own times of distress.  

She taught me about honor, love, family, respect, sacrifice, ....she taught me to be a warrior, like her.  And she did it all between washing vegetables, brandishing her giant meat cleaver, and tossing morsels in her wok; while I hungrily watched at the hem of her worn out draw-string denim apron.  So while we made turkey jook, one of her biggest lessons from that was to not waste any food.

Her particular brand of turkey jook was different from the rest of the island.  Mainly because it involved throwing everything we didn't finish into the pot to flavor the broth.  So naturally, it tasted different every year.  But, for some reason we'd undoubtedly always have leftover raw carrots that she'd finely dice and throw in for color and sweetness.  So to this day, I can't have turkey jook without specifically going to buy carrots for that purpose.  

I've had many years where my peers would laugh at my family's odd carrot-filled turkey jook.  But, I just smile at them.  Because to me, that's my popo's wisdom "chop-suey-ed" into a bowl, and served steaming hot.  Thank you, Popo, for the love, the wisdom, and the laughs.  I hope to make you proud as the warrior that I've become today.

Turkey Jook

(sorry, there are no measurements. Popo never measured anything except by saying..."oh, throw a little of this, and a little of that. Use your tastebuds.")

Ingredients:

-Turkey carcass (reserve the leftover turkey meat)

-water

-leftover vegetables

-ginger 

-cilantro

-onions

-green onions

-star anise (small handful)

-sesame oil 

-soy sauce

-1 cup white jasmine rice

-2 large carrots, finely diced

Sautee the ginger, onions, green onions, and star anise in sesame oil on medium high for a few minutes, until onions have become translucent.  Add turkey carcass, leftover vegetables, and enough cold water to cover.  Bring to a boil.  Cover and put on simmer for 2 hours.  Strain broth out.  Sautee another onion and cilantro in a stock pot for a few minutes.  Add rice and coat.  Add strained broth and bring to a boil (approximately 9:1 water to rice ratio).  Simmer on medium low and stir frequently for 2 hours.  In the last half an hour, add in the diced carrots and turkey meat. Add a few dashes of soy sauce, to taste.  Serve hot with cilantro leaves as garnish.

[Mmmmm. Jenjen says "...needs thousand-year-old-egg." But I think it looks perfect just the way it is.]

An event of historic proportions

You guys! This right here? This is a photo of my child eating congee.

                           

If you read this post, you understand why this is such a huge deal. 

Here's the bowl of congee I made for myself yesterday morning, which Kamal kept trying to put his own spoon into, which prompted me to give him his own little ramekinful. 

It's just bai zhou topped with sautéed baby kale and one and a half of Adam's perfect soft-boiled eggs. (The other half-egg is on Kamal's breakfast plate). 

Since Kamal has consistently refused rice and since I've committed to eating congee every morning for a year, I will typically make us separate breakfasts, like this one. 

Our breakfasts one day last week: Kamal had roasted sweet potatoes, roasted chicken, sauteed spinach and spaghetti in meat sauce. I had brown rice congee, an egg over-easy, roasted chicken and sauteed spinach.

But yesterday morning gave me hope! I mean, look at this! He was so into it! He's only just learning about eating with utensils and yet he's spooning up that congee like a champ!

Okay, in this photo there's technically nothing actually on the spoon, but whatever. Points for effort, kiddo. 

The rest of the day was just golden, probably because when you start the day with congee things tend to go well. There was some two-wheeling and kumquat eating:

And then later in the evening Kamal helped Daddy fix dinner. 

                                     

Of course, this morning when I optimistically gave him a serving of congee, Kamal studiously removed it all from his bowl onto the dining table, and then dramatically flung a piece of congee-covered kale onto the floor. Chagrin! 

But a few minutes later, he trod across the discarded kale, and its congee coating made it stick to his foot. And then with a delighted expression he discovered the kale stuck to the bottom of his foot, sat down, peeled it off, and ate it. Parenting moral: Progress, such as it is, is not necessarily linear. 

Adam's perfect-every-time boiled eggs

bai zhou topped with spinach, roasted chicken, Adafina Culinary's fabulous kim chee, and the perfect soft-boiled egg

Mayumi made tea eggs, and posted a question about them to my Facebook page: "Once (the eggs) had sat in the marinade, I had a hard time removing the shell without losing significant chunks of egg. Tips?"

Truth be told, Adam and I had the exact same problem. Peeling the first tea egg for the pretty photo was a huge, time-consuming pain in the booty. The next time we make them, we're going to go back to the way my mom did it: completely hard-boiling the eggs and peeling them fully before putting them in the marinade. This way, you get richer flavor, and you get it quicker, but the trade-off is, of course, that you don't get that gorgeous marbled effect.

Lots of friends chimed in with their best egg-boiling and -peeling tips: my friend Kim reminded us that fresher eggs are much harder to peel than older ones and a couple of other friends agreed; Kristina suggested white vinegar in the boiling water; Andrew mentioned shocking boiled eggs in ice water after cooking; and Suchandra linked to this really neat idea for tidily baking your hard-"boiled" eggs. (I'm totally trying baked boiled eggs the next time I need to make a really large batch!)

When Adam boils eggs, they always turn out perfectly and are super-easy to peel. Here's his tried-and-true method. And it absolutely does help to start with eggs that are a couple of weeks old. Supermarket eggs are pretty much always old enough. 

Adam's Perfect-Every-Time Boiled Eggs

1. Bring enough water to easily cover your eggs to a boil.

2. Every egg has one rounder end and one end that's more pointy. Pierce the rounder end of the egg (Adam uses a thumb tack). Sounds tricky, but this is easy to do once you're used to it. 3. Carefully lower your eggs into the boiling water--a slotted spoon is a perfect tool for this--and adjust the heat to maintain a simmer, not a rolling boil.

4. Set a timer for six minutes if you want very soft-boiled eggs, nine if you want hard-boiled eggs, and somewhere in between for somewhere-in-between eggs. Keep in mind that eggs of different sizes will cook a little differently. (The eggs in the photo above are large eggs, but not extra-large, and they cooked for seven minutes.)

5. Drain the water and then run the eggs under cold tap water for 30 to 60 seconds.

Other people's congee!

I'm so excited by how many people have jumped on the congee train. Here are some photos from folks of their own congee. They all look so delicious!

You remember Anne's lovely chicken and leek congee, of course; here's a photo to remind you. 

If Wes Anderson did a congee photo shoot, this is what it would look like.

(let's nobody forget to include Cody!)

The fabulous Laura von Holt, a.k.a. Von Hottie, made this beautiful bowl of congee topped with egg, spinach, shiitake mushrooms, and sesame oil. 

Says Laura: "It's delicious & reminds me of eating plate lunches in Hawai'i. I drew a heart with Sriracha sauce because Lorelle says food is best for you when it is made with love." Awwww. And it's true!

Lucie, a gifted cook, baker and yogi, made bai zhou topped with egg and greens ("Reminds me of my grandma's house," she says): 

and then a savory congee made with homemade stock and topped with tofu, greens and sesame seeds. 

I literally can't look at this photograph without my mouth watering.

My friend and fellow acupuncturist, Lesley Custodio of Feel Well Acupuncture in San Diego, made this exceptionally healthful savory quinoa congee. 

Quinoa always gets this adorable little curly tail when you cook it.

Here's how she did it: "I first sauteed onions and garlic in olive oil. When they were golden and caramelized, I took them out. Then I added some leftover rotisserie chicken and ginger and let it cook for a little bit before adding water and quinoa. I think I used about half a cup of quinoa and 4 cups of water. I added safflower (hong hua) and a bay leaf and let it boil away. When I'm ready to serve it, I add back the onions I took out (my Mom's secret trick!) Salt and pepper to taste too."

Lesley's quinoa congee is a terrific example of a whole-grain congee. Even though I feel strongly that the small amount of white rice consumed in a bowl of congee can't have more than a negligible impact on the blood sugar levels of a basically healthy person, variety is a nice thing. Moreover, having a whole-grain option can be important for diabetic or pre-diabetic people.


Another great whole-grain congee option: Jenjen's brown basmati rice congee, cooked with kale, ginger and cilantro. 

Yum.

Jenjen and I have been friends for twenty-something years, and she's one of those people that you know you can turn to kind of no matter what. Like Jenjen, this congee sounds warm and comforting--perfect February food. 

Here's Mayumi's gorgeous congee, topped with tea eggs, roasted nori, chopped scallions and Sriracha.

Mayumi and I have also been friends for forever, and she is as lovely a writer as she is a friend and congee-dresser.


Tara and Les Goodman run the phenomenal Adafina Culinary catering company, and they are congee eaters from the way back. Tara sent me this photo of  her Saturday morning breakfast: "This morning's congee: made with chicken carcass broth and topped with chopped ginger, fermented black bean chili sauce, cilantro, fermented cabbage and crispy onions."

See that squat brown ceramic crock in the back left there? That's the fermented cabbage, and it's getting it's own blog post one day soon.

Um, holy moly. 

Another fellow acupuncturist, Molly Shapiro of MBS Acupuncture in Bethesda, made this bowl of deliciousness:



You can read her recipe and experience with congee in Asian countries in her thoughtful blog post, right here. 


And the beautiful people at Wishbone restaurant in Petaluma put this gorgeous sweet congee on their brunch menu!

And then they served it in the most adorable mini-French-oven you ever saw in your whole life.

Black forbidden rice cooked in coconut milk and topped with toasted coconut and fresh fruit. This is the decadent way I started my morning today. It was like eating dessert first--but I still felt all wholesome and virtuous. Win-win! 


Speaking of sweet congees, the next sweet congee recipe I'm looking forward to trying is this Warming Pear and Ginger Congee,  written by another acupuncture colleague and friend, Michael Ishii of Stonewell Acupuncture in New York City. It's a recipe written with autumn in mind, but it sounds perfect for the unusually dry California winter we've been having.

Thank you all so much for sharing your congee adventures with me! Please keep them coming--you can shoot photos and recipes over to me at lorelle@thesaxenaclinic.com