Jones'n for congee/rice porridge

[vsoy]

I made a shitload of congee/rice porridge today, underestimating how much rice expands and overestimating how much I can eat. Usually I can eat 3 big bowls and be hungry an hour later but for some reason, I was not the least bit hungry today.

Now that I got a ridiculous amount of rice mush in the fridge, I gotta figure out ways to jazz it up. Usually, I'm just a pickled cucumber, shredded fish/pork powder person. But today, I threw in some sausage I had in the fridge and some dry roasted peanuts. We were going through lean times when I was growing up so we used to throw in some weird stuff like american cheese slices or Chinese BBQ pork(not together). I think the melted cheese would make me nostalgic but at the same time, make me want to throw up. Any ideas for congee toppings?

[Taliesin Stormheller]

- Toss in some Chinese onions, chopped black eggs, a lil' shredded ginger and some meat bits. Cook until it smells good.
- Last night's leftovers, especially if they contain Ha Ha sauce.
- Add dates, wolfberries 'n' sugar. That's good for menstrual trouble if you're on your period.
- Assorted Chinese pickles, it's not just Ja Cai anymore. You can get Beijing pickles, winter pickles, etc.
- Fermented Bean Curd of course.

[Bizarre_Female]

I love it with shredded chicken...and green onion is a must.

[maogirl]

mm...century egg!!!!

and ba hu (i only know this name in hokkien, sorry)...that sweet pork jerky? if you can get the macanese style ones, they're the best!

btw, i have to say, cantonese juk is the best...hokkien and filipino juk are really :( sorry, folks, but it's the truth.

[awong]

btw, i have to say, cantonese juk is the best...hokkien and filipino juk are really :( sorry, folks, but it's the truth.
its really good yep, thats what my mom makes, had to glance over it twice, I probably would have known what it was if it was said and not typed. same with bok choy too

[ellencho]

When I was little on of my favorite things to eat was jumbok juk which is basically a Korean congee made with abalone. Years later, while in Korea with my family, we went out to Inchon and I ordered some jumbok juk and when it came to the table, it was GREEN! Apparently, since you can't get fresh abalone in NY, my mom had been making it with canned abalone, chopping it into tiny pieces, and not really having to deal with the innards. The Inchon jumbok juk that I was eating had been made with the freshest abalone, but I wasn't old enough to appreciate the taste of the fresh abalone and its innards. I choked down as much as I could without getting grossed out at the bitterness but I've never touched jumbok juk again.

Anyway, I don't know how many of you have visited Vegas, but every breakfast buffet at a major hotel has a congee section, complete with the different toppings - pickles, eggs, meat, etc to put atop. Most of it is pretty good too, but I suppose congee isn't something you can really fuck up.

[toml]

mm...century egg!!!!

Is that the black egg? Where the egg white is some kind of black jelly substance?

I remember watching a Fear Factor where the contestants had to eat that and some of them were so squeamish. Idiots. I could have ate that w/o flinching.

[rainshowerz]

Maogirl, you've got no luuuv for lugaw?! BOO!

[cattygurl]

I have issues. i HATE egg whites.

OTOH, I love egg yolks. I gotta admit tho, I cannot stomach century egg!

I'm pretty much a wuss when it comes to food. I'll eat some funky veggie stuff (like the japanese natto) , but when it comes to protein and animal stuff, i am a complete and total wuss.

I rarely eat meat- i can't stand raw meat of any kind. If I handle it, i can't eat it. I can only eat it if I haven't seen it raw and I didn't have to touch it that way. I'm just born vegetarian for the most part, I think.

[ellencho]

I have issues. i HATE egg whites.

OTOH, I love egg yolks. I gotta admit tho, I cannot stomach century egg!


Other than scrambled, and omelette or quiche, I can't stomach any sort of breakfast eggs. I've never eaten an entire boiled egg in my life. I used to not mind the whites but now I can't even deal with those.

Anyone know if century eggs are made from chicken or duck eggs? They look cool but seriously, I'm not eating one of them even if you paid me.

[JadeDragon]

Oh, my siblings and I LOVE century eggs in our congee. It's a must, along with spring onions (Chinese chives?). But I think they can't be eaten in excess, because of the process used to make them. Does anyone know if that's true?

[cattygurl]

I know century eggs are fermented products.

I've heard so many ways thry're "made." which is true. does anyone know?

[maogirl]

eep! i had a feeling either rainshowerz or makulita would bust me for that anti-lugaw comment! :lol:

sorry, but i can't stand lugaw. i love the way it smells, but the taste is a disappointment (whereas it's the opposite for cantonese juk). the worst is chicken lugaw with that over-boiled, no-taste chicken. the only way i can tolerate it is to pour like half a bottle of patis into it.

they use chemicals to make century eggs now, right? but it's basically wrapped in mud and straw and placed in a warm/hot place...i seem to remember that they buried it in horse dung, but i could be wrong.

century eggs are made from chicken eggs, while duck eggs are used to make salty eggs. also yummy. and of course, the king of egg food: BALUT!

awong, :lol: at bok choy...same thing with me. i used to think bok choy (written) was something to do with chickens because you know, bok bok bok is the sound that chickens make. :lol:

[cattygurl]

GAAAAAAH! BALUT! WAAAAH!

I am such a wuss. :oops:

I'm gonna stick to mah rabbit food. :cry:

[redguard]

I know century eggs are fermented products.

I've heard so many ways thry're "made." which is true. does anyone know?

Here it is, turns out there are about six ways to do it:

PRESERVED EGGS (PIDAN)

Processing Methods

Perhaps the most important method for preserving eggs is the one that produces pidan, or eggs coated on the outside. Depending on preference, methods may be modified to produce songhuadan (pine floral eggs) or caidan (colourful eggs). The earliest known description of an egg preservation method is that of Wang Zizhen during the Ming Dynasty about 500 years ago. Blunt and Wang described an essentially similar method in 1918:

Into an infusion of 11/2, lbs of strong black tea is stirred successively 9 lbs of lime, 41/2 lbs of common salt and about one bushel of freshly burned wood ashes. This pasty mixture is put away to cool over night. Next day 1,000 duck's eggs of the best quality are cleaned and one by one carefully and evenly covered with the mixture and stored away for 5 months. Then they are covered further with rice hulls, and so, with a coating fully 1/4 inch thick, are ready for the market. They improve on further keeping, however, for at first they have a strong taste of lime which gradually disappears. The eggs are eaten without cooking.

Since then, a number of other methods differing only slightly from the above have appeared in the literature. For example, Chen Chunjen, in his book on Chinese foods published in 1963, classified methods into four types, although they are not radically different from one another or from that of Blunt and Wang. One of his methods is as follows:

For 100 duck eggs, take 21/2 catties [one catty equals about 600 g] of lime, dissolve in 1.6 catties of boiling water, then mix with charcoal powder (1.5 catties), caustic soda (0.5 catty), and table salt (0.4 catty). If a floral design in the egg white is desired, pine twigs with needles should be added during the boiling of water and discarded after boiling. The above mixture should be stirred and ground into a paste, which is then ready for coating over each of the 100 eggs. Finally, cover the coated eggs with a thin layer of rice hulls to prevent them from sticking together, and store in an earthenware jar, which is then sealed with mud. The jar is then put in a dry place. After two weeks' storage, the preserved eggs are ready to be eaten.

Another method uses similar ingredients except that tea is used instead of water. The tea is first mixed with yellow mud into a thin paste, into which the eggs are dipped one by one so as to be covered completely with a layer of the paste before they are removed. The lime, table salt, and caustic soda are mixed and heated in a cooking pot until bubbling. The mud-coated eggs are then put in, turned over to get fully coated, and then removed to store in an earthenware pot which is then sealed. After one month the eggs are ready to be eaten.

More recent literature describes many methods that vary somewhat in the amounts of ingredients used in the paste or immersion fluid as well as in procedures. However, the main ingredients-lime, salt, tea, and ash-are invariably the same. Duck eggs are generally preferred, as they are thought to produce a better result, although hens' eggs can be used. The time required for processing or aging varies from one week to five months, depending on the alkali concentration in the processing medium and temperature. Two preservation methods, one for coating and the other for immersing eggs, are as follows:

Coating method. To preserve 100 fresh eggs, use 0.7 catty of table salt, 0.4 catty of anhydrous sodium carbonate (Na2CO3 ), 0.04 catty of red tea leaves, 0.7 catty of lime (CaO), 8 catties of grass ash, and 0.4 catty of rice hulls. First, boil the tea leaves in water, filter out the leaves, and add sufficient boiled water to make 2.6 catties of liquid. Mix the salt, lime, and sodium carbonate in a wooden tub, add the liquid tea, and pound the mixture with a wooden pestle until quite smooth. Pass the grass ash through a sieve, add it to the mixture, and stir into a paste. Set aside overnight to allow time for the chemical reaction to take place. Clean the eggs and let them dry in the open air before coating them with the paste. When the eggs are completely coated, roll them over rice hulls, and place them one by one in a porcelain jar, which should then be tightly sealed with a mixture of yellow mud and a little table salt. Eggs preserved in this manner can be eaten after 15 days in hot summer weather, after 20 days in the autumn, and after 30 days in winter.

Immersion method. Immersion fluid is made by adding about 100 catties of water to a vessel containing a mixture of 6.5 to 8 catties of sodium carbonate, 15 to 35 catties of lime, 3 to 7 catties of table salt, and 0.2 to 0.5 catty of lead oxide, stirring continuously. When the mixture is cool, immerse the eggs one by one and maintain the mixture at a temperature two to three degrees below room temperature. After 30 days, the eggs, having acquired a dark coffee colour and a pleasant taste, are ready for eating.

A further simplified procedure has recently come into use: Mix table salt, tea leaf dust, and lead oxide with water; then gradually add in sodium hydroxide, stirring all the while, until the solution contains 5 per cent sodium hydroxide, 4 per cent table salt, 2 per cent tea leaf dust, and 0.2 per cent lead oxide. The eggs are first immersed in the fluid mixture for 25 days, after which the fluid is drained off and the vessel is sealed with a plastic membrane. After another 25 days the eggs are ready for eating.

[JadeDragon]

Balut is lovely, although my sis thinks it's disgusting (eh, what does she know?). I'm not squeamish about food, but there are lines I will draw at consuming certain animal parts, like monkey brains.