Officials and men of letters say it is better for a man to wait for his congee, than to make the congee wait for him
-Yuan Mei, Recipes from the Garden of Contentment (1792)
With a dozen alkali-treated duck eggs curing docilely in my pantry, hermetically sealed in their beeswax casings, I grew excited about making a dish that would properly showcase their beauty and strangeness. This was blind optimism on my part, given that I had no idea at the time what I would find once I broke the fragrant yellow seal. I decided to make congee, that quintessential Asian comfort food of rice cooked in large amounts of liquid over a languid fire, until, according to Qing dynasty poet and scholar Yuan Mei, both ingredients “combine harmoniously, in one soft smoothness”. If you see water and no rice,” he wrote, “this is not congee. If you see rice and no water, this is not congee either”.
Etymological Untanglings
What comes to mind when you think of the word “congee”? I think of dim sum restaurants and Chinese breakfast tables. British cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop calls congee one of “the most universal of comfort foods […] which is like a caress of the mouth and stomach, as soothing as baby food. At its simplest, it is just rice cooked slowly, in plenty of water, until the grains dissolve into a voluptuous, satiny mass.” Congee is popular across many Asian countries, from India to the Philippines, from Japan to Indonesia. The Chinese pictograph that represents it, 粥, has many pronunciations, in the different Chinese languages as well as the languages where Chinese characters were adopted, like Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean, but none of them sound remotely like the word “congee”. So why does the word carry such a strong association with China?
In his essay “A Short Course in Globalese,” Nury Vittachi humourously places congee in his growing list of words “which English speakers believed were Chinese, and Chinese speakers believed were English.” Indeed, congee often gets “translated” into English as rice porridge or rice gruel, but the dish in question is not called as such in either Cantonese or Mandarin, where it is referred to as juk and zhou, respectively. Congee is what gets printed underneath on menus, for those tourists who can’t read Chinese!
The punchline, as you may have guessed, is that it is neither. Like the rest of the words on Vittachi’s list, congee grew out of a particular historical context, one in which Hong Kong was mainly populated by Chinese speakers, but “many socio-economic decision-makers
were European sailors fresh from Malay-speaking lands, and other expatriate communities, with Indians playing a key role”.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach China by sea, arriving in the Pearl River estuary in 1513, and a few years later successfully conducting trade in Guangzhou. Portugal obtained a lease to establish a trading post in nearby Macau in 1557 and generally held the monopoly on sea trade in Asia until the end of the 16th century. It is generally accepted that congee comes from the Dravidian term for the water in which rice has been cooked (kanji in Tamil, gañji in Telugu and Kannada , kanni in Malayalam and ganji in Urdu).
The Portuguese picked up the word from their colonies in South Asia, and the word was later adopted into English as it too, accrued a colonial presence in Asia. Other words from Vittachi’s list include coolie, palanquin, pagoda and Mandarin.
I wanted my congee to be served as a main dish, not as an accompaniment to other dishes, so I did not want to rely solely on the nutritional values of rice (which are few). I therefore cooked the rice in a rich, gelatinous pork and chicken feet broth, with pieces of pork shoulder cooked until they are tender enough to shred with a fork. I also snuck in an impressive amount of cauliflower, shredded to the consistency of rice by a food processor, without having to sacrifice the velvety smoothness of the congee. Seasoned with white pepper, and topped with century egg slices, sesame oil and scallions, this congee is rich, nutritious, flavourful and oh so satisfying. It is the perfect meal for cold weather, poor health, or when you just crave a bit of home-cooked comfort.
Century Eggs
This recipe uses century eggs (皮蛋) as a garnish. Century eggs are duck eggs treated with strong alkalis that denature the proteins in the egg white and transform the structure of the yolk. The technology was developed in China centuries ago as a way to preserve duck eggs, which don’t keep very well, and they are now enjoyed throughout China and abroad for their unique taste and texture. For this recipe, I made my own century eggs, but you can also buy them from an Asian grocery. If century eggs are not available where you live, you can substitute hard-boiled salted duck eggs (homemade or purchased from an Asian grocery), or fresh eggs, cooked in the shell to your preferred level of doneness.
Joëlle
Serves 2
Comfort food at its best! A satiny rice congee, cooked in a luscious pork broth with tender threads of shredded pork and topped with homemade century eggs. I snuck in some cauliflower too, but you can't tell. Soft, nutritious, easy to digest, and so, so, so good.
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Ingredients
- 2-3 lbs. pork bones
- 3-4 chicken feet (optional, for extra gelatin)
- Water
- 1 lb. pork shoulder
- Sea salt or Himalayan salt, to salt the pork
- 1 tbsp lard
- 1/4 cup rice wine, to deglaze
- 1/3 cup jasmine rice
- 2 tbsp minced ginger
- 3 cups pork broth (from above)
- 2 cups, riced cauliflower
- Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
- 2 century eggs (preserved duck eggs), peeled and quartered
- Scallions, thinly sliced
- Toasted sesame oil
Instructions
- Generously salt pork shoulder, preferably hours before cooking. Store in the fridge until about 1 hour before cooking.
- Bring a large stockpot to a boil. Add the pork bones and boil 3-5 minutes to remove impurities. Drain and rinse the bones well under cold water.
- Put the bones and chicken feet (if using) in the Instant Pot liner, and fill the liner with water up to the 2/3 mark.
- Making sure the Steam Release Handle is turned to the Sealing position, set the Pressure Cook program to cook for 120 minutes on high pressure.
- Let the Instant Pot do a natural release, and take the lid off.
- Strain the broth through a fine mesh strainer, or a strainer lined with cheesecloth. Set aside enough broth for the congee (3 cups if you don't scale the recipe) and store the rest in the refrigerator for up to 5 days , or in the freezer for up to a year.
- Clean the liner and return it to the Instant Pot. Set it to Saute mode.
- When the Instant Pot is hot, add lard and spread it around the bottom of the liner.
- Brown pork shoulder on all sides (about 5-6 minutes per side). Set browned meat aside on a cutting board.
- Deglaze the pot with rice wine, and press Cancel on the Instant Pot to turn off Saute mode.
- Cut pork shoulder into large cubes (roughly 6cm³) and add them back to the pot, along with the rice, minced ginger, and 3 cups of pork broth.
- Twist the Instant Pot lid on. Making sure the Steam Release Handle is turned to the Sealing position, set the Pressure Cook program to cook for 30 minutes on high pressure, with natural release (for at least 15 minutes).
- While the rice and pork are cooking, roughly chop cauliflower, put the pieces in a food processor and pulse until they are reduced to rice-like proportions
- When the pressure has been fully released from the Instant Pot, remove the lid and transfer the chunks of pork to a large mixing bowl with a slotted spoon.
- Set the Instant Pot to Saute mode. Shred the pork into bite-sized pieces with two forks and return the pork to the pot.
- Add the riced cauliflower and cook, mixing occasionally until the cauliflower is soft (a few minutes).
- Season to taste with white pepper and salt or soy sauce. Add water if the porridge is too thick.
- Spoon congee into bowls, garnish with quartered century eggs, green onion and a drizzle of sesame oil.
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References
Dunlop, F. (2008). Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper : a Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. London: Ebury Press.
Dunlop, F., & Terry, C. (2013). Every grain of rice: simple Chinese home cooking. New York: W.W. Norton.
Lim, L. (2017, November 10). Where the word congee comes from – the answer may surprise you. South China Morning Post. Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/2119163/where-word-congee-comes-answer-may-surprise-you
Vittachi, N. (2010). A Short Course in Globalese. In D. Nunan & J. Choi (Eds.), Language and Culture: Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity (pp.215-222). New York, NY: Routlege.
Guidance and Inspiration
Pressure Cook Recipes — Chinese Century Egg and Pork Congee
What to Cook Today — How to Make Basic Asian Rice Porridge
❤ Thank you Amy, Jacky and Marvellina!
