What's For Afters?

A Soothing Breakfast for When One Has Indulged in Rich Food for Too Long

I woke up yesterday to discover no breakfast food in the house. No bread, no cereal, no fruit. Actually that's not quite true there was cereal but the milk was somewhat suspect.

Hungry but not wishing to go out and forage I inspected the contents of the fridge. There was some leftover rice there. Leftover from New Year's Eve a mere three nights ago. Those of you who are chary of the fact that cooled down rice may contain some vicious toxin that can't be killed by reheating, even reheating really ferociously, may want to make this with uncooked rice.

This breakfast has its heritage in the congees or rices porridges of southern China. And is informed by the xi fan or watery rice porridges of elswhere in China. With possibly a touch of something a former Japanese flatmate once taught me. But any Canto-mama or Bejing-babe or Tokyo-housewife would probably be horrified by it.

A sort of breakfast congee

Tip the cold rice into a pan. Cover with water - the more water the more soupy the porridge. Add spoonful of Marigold bouillion. Snip in some spring onions. Heat for five mins or so (or 20 or so if cooking from raw.) Season to taste. (Salt and white pepper would be classic, but black pepper's fine.)

And that's it. Warm, soothing and easy on the digestive tract.

An egg cracked into it at the end and stirred about would be most excellent and add some protein. But I didn't have one. Ginger would also be good, but mine was rather furry. A dash of fish sauce and/or soy sauce livens it up.

I however remembereing the peanuts service with xi fan (which literally is just broken pieces of rice cooked in a large quantity of water to make a soup - very bland) stirred in some peanut butter. Which was.....ok.

Labels: Chinese, recipe, rice

posted by Cal @ 2:21 PM