Pulling on my Celery Strings
Whilst congee planning is very simple and simple, there is, nevertheless, an countless array of means that you can prepare dinner, garnish and serve it. It’s like the Zen thought of meditating on the exact bowl of rice every morning till it will become a different bowl of rice every single early morning — other than mushier.
In Bhutan, congee is made use of to rejoice the Blessed Rainy Day, a holiday break that marks the start out of the once-a-year monsoon season. In Thailand, extremely-bland congee is frequently served alongside additional-flavorful facet dishes that you daintily add, a procedure that a Thai friend of mine explained as combining “flavor” and “not taste.”
When congee is served as a a single-bowl meal, on the other hand, it is personalized toward the conclude of cooking, like the congee that showed up in my mom’s clinic area final 7 days in Denver.
I’d stopped at a dim sum area to seize her some dumplings, and made the decision to buy wonton soup as effectively, which is essentially dumpling soup. But my double dumpling shipping was derailed, as the kitchen area mistakenly swapped the wonton soup for congee with flounder. It was pillowy and ethereal in texture, and flavored exquisitely with ginger and scallion, and mother slurped it down. The subsequent morning I reheated the congee with leftover broccoli with oyster sauce. Mom’s congee, at the time once more, was best.
Two days immediately after the clinic dim sum session, I showed up at the aforementioned stormy farmers marketplace in time to acquire a bowl of Ma’s Rooster Congee. It was garnished with cilantro and scallion from a neighboring stall, and contained quinoa. I need to confess I believed quinoa congee sounded a bit crunchy, but I know plenty of about congee to not inform a Southeast Asian how to make it. It turns out Ma realized ideal. My little ones could not quit having it, undaunted by all of the added nutrition.