An attempt to cook the ultimate congee

Congee is one of the more difficult Chinese dishes to make. The recipe may appear easy. I mean, it's just rice and water. What is so difficult about that? Well, read on and you'll see. :)

The idea of cooking congee came about when I watched this Cantonese food programme. I watched one of the episodes which featured this porridge stall. According to the owner, he used a little glutinous rice in his porridge to give it a nice stickiness. He used a combination of meat and seafood broth as a base for the porridge. This inspired me to cook the ultimate congee.

I started by soaking some rice one hour prior to cooking. I used 8:2 ratio of short grain rice to glutinous rice. I used top grade Korean rice and Korean glutinous rice because those were the only type of rice I have apart from mixed grain rice.

I prepared an anchovy based stock by simmering anchovies in a pot of water for about 30 minutes. I ensured that the stock to rice ratio was 6:1. I prefer my congee thick.

I used Korean anchovies because they give a lovely clean flavor and are superior to the Thailand and Malaysian anchovies. When I was preparing the stock, I added winter melon cores ( I removed the cores of the winter melon for my dessert) and marinated non-organic pork meat, which was already boiled to remove the impurities.I added a little of Tianjin preserved vegetables to enhance the taste of the stock.

Meanwhile, I prepared a pot of nikujaga.

After 30 minutes, I sieve the stock. I discarded the anchovies and winter melon cores. I introduced the pork into the nikujaga. The stock was a beautiful golden-brown colour. I brought it to boil, added rice! in it a nd set it to simmer. I also added some goji berries. I let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

While waiting, I chopped some wombok and spring onions. I had the wombok cut into tiny bits so they would easily melt into the porridge. After 20 minutes, I started stirring the porridge vigorously to prevent it from sticking to the pot. I used a non-stick pot but still... I stirred it until the rice is broken down. Before turning off the fire, I added a little of conpoy sauce. I used Hokkaido dried scallops to prepare the conpoy sauce. I added a bit of crushed almonds into the porridge as well. I season it well with pepper, light soy sauce ( Bidor Kwong Heng, goddess range) and sesame oil.

Finally, I got this:

I served the congee with nikujaga because when I was in Hong Kong, I always get stewed radish with congee.

I wish I had the time to make this again.