by Stephen, Taiwan
I have been eating a lot of rice porridge lately. Once a day, at least. This is a big turnaround from my early days here in Taiwan when I thought of it as a very boring dish. I would avoid it, (as a dentist friend of mine likes to say), like the plaque.
That was until two years ago when for my birthday I asked for and got a clay cooking pot. It came with instructions recommending seasoning the pot by first cooking a batch of rice porridge. So, I decided, if I had to cook rice porridge, I might as well learn to prepare it right.
A major clue to the original rationale for rice porridge lies in its name. Xi fan means sparse rice. This is best explained by comparing rice porridge to steamed rice. Steam a cup of raw rice and you will end up with about three cups of cooked rice. Boil a cup of rice and you'll get about six cups of porridge - much more if you cook it for longer with more water. The rice is 'sparse' in relation to the water used. It is a very effective way of making rice go further.
So I trotted off to my local grocery store where the elderly owner recommended a bunch of different canned and bottled items to use as side dishes. Boiling the rice, I underestimated the water to rice ratio and found myself having to add more water every few minutes to stop the rice from sticking to the pot. But my first effort turned out alright, and for the first time, I enjoyed rice porridge. I enjoyed it so much that I ate it several days in a row.
There is no absolute formula for cooking the rice as long as there is enough water to do the job. A shorter cooking time, (you will need at least 20 minutes), results in a thick porridge with the rice grain structure intact. Cook for longer (some people cook it for an hour or more), with more water to create a more viscous mix. Add copious amounts of liquid to make a very watery version.
Unlike the congee (zhou) of Guangdong, which is usually flavoured and includes other ingredients, Taiwanese rice porridge is cooked in nothing but water. Not even salt goes into the pot. Traditionally it is the standard easy-to-digest baby food of the rice eating regions of China, as well as a bland food for the infirm, particularly the gastricly unwell. For the rest of the population rice porridge served with a selection of mostly pungently flavoured side dishes, used to be the standard breakfast. These days though, rice porridge has somewhat fallen by the wayside in the wake of greater choice and busier lifestyles - it does not lend itself well to take-a-away or a quick clandestine gobble in the office. It has been relegated to the role of comfort food. A friend recalls eating rice porridge as a child every morning with nothing more than a few pieces of pickled cucumber to liven it up. It was a régime she grew thoroughly sick of. These days, she eats rice porridge only occasionally but always with delight, especially as there is now much more than pickled cucumber to complement it.
To get a nice balance between the bland and the savoury, rice porridge is best eaten with a range of side dishes such as those pictured: from left, clockwise: Chinese sausage, fermented tofu in chilli, dried Oriental radish (daikon), bamboo shoots in chilli oil, stewed peanuts, pickled young ginger, pickled celtuce stem, and in the centre, salty duck eggs.
Preparing rice porridge is not difficult. In fact it can be very quick and easy, after the first time, if you keep some rice leftover. One large batch of rice can be stretched out for several days just by adding water and reheating. And, as many of the accompaniments are pre-prepared, it is just a matter of opening some cans or jars to make a meal. If you vary your side dishes a little from meal to meal, things rarely get dull.
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