Scholar porridge recipe

To satisfy some of my readers' curiosity on making your very own scholar porridge for the people you care, I have decided to share mine on this blog.

Ingredients: (serving 8)

For the Stock:
400g chicken carcass
400g Pork Big Bone
1 stalk celery, chopped into cubes
8 cloves of crushed garlic
40g of ginger

1) First, boil the water. Then put the chicken bones and pork bones into the boiling water.
(Note: This step is to scald and remove the blood water from the bones.)

2) Then rinse the bones well with cold water and put them aside.

3) Boil another pot of water and add the boiled bones with celery, garlic and ginger.

4) Simmer for 2 hours and add water if neccessary. Filter the soup stock. If you prepare a larger portion of soup stock, you can divide the portions out and store them in the freezer for at least 3 months for future use.

For the marinate:

250 g pork shoulder butt
(or assortment of pork liver, pork intestine)
1 1/2 tsp light soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp rice wine
1 1/2 tsp corn starch
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp finely shredded ginger
1/16 tsp white pepper
1 lemon

1) Wash all the meat assortments to rid off the blood. Otherwise, it might give the porridge lightly brown.

2)Put all the marinade ingredients in the mixing bowl and mix them thoroughly. (Marinate the intestine with lemon juice) Cover with the wrap and put them in the fridge to marinate for at least 30 min.

For the congee:

200g rice
soup stock (for 8 servings)
marinated meat (for 8 servings)
water

1) Wash the rice with cold water and drain (~2 to 3 times)

2) Soak the rice for at least 15 min (ideally 1 hour soaking)

3) Boil 2L of water in the pot.

4) Add the soaked rice and the chicken stock (ensure that the rice to water ratio is 1:8 to 1:10)

5) Bring to boil over high heat

6) Cover the pot and leave the lid slightly open

7) Lower the heat to medium-low and stir occasionally to ensure it didn't stick at the base
(Note: Some experts may find stirring unneccesary but as a novice, stirring will help to prevent any disaster to your porridge.)

8) Cook the rice until it thickens to a consistency (~1hr)

9) Add your marinated meat assortment into the porridge and cook further with stirring

10) Once the meat is cooked, the porridge the ready to be served. You can garnish with coriander and century egg.

Interesting Chinese Porridge

Whenever people mention about eating porridge, one might associate it to a meal that is served when one is unwell. If you think this is where it ends, I can tell you how porridge is more interesting than it seems.

1) The Legend about 'scholar porridge'

Have you heard about the 'scholar congee' legend? It goes like this: during the Qing dynasty, there was a newly appointed imperial scholar met the old imperial censor by chance and invited him to a congee meal. When the new scholar found out that the old censor's son was preparing for the imperial examination, the new scholar told him that the porridge he took is called 'scholar congee'. When the old censor heard this, he was delighted about it. At the end, the old censor's son really top the imperial examination and that how the 'scholar congee' name comes about. If you want to know more about the recipe, it's basically boiled porridge with pork and other pig's assortment like pig's intestine and liver.

2) Healing properties

The reason why it shares the reputation of 'food for the unwell' is probably because it can help to promote digestion and the provide the 'qi' (or energy). It can also aid in absorption of carbohydrates that strengthens the body when most other favourite food suddenly becomes unappetizing.

3) Types of porridge

There are three method of making porridge:

a) Teochew Modern porridge

The simplest method is the modern 'teochew' porridge where the rice is cooked separately in a rice cooker. When served, you'll serve the rice with the clear seafood and vegetable soup. I especially like it with tomato pieces, fish slices and tofu cubes.


b) Teochew Traditional porridge

The other 'teochew' porridge is a traditional method; the porridge is plainly boiled with water. The soup is slightly clear and the individual grains can still be seen. This type of porridge usually goes well with light and fresh side dishes such as steam fish, stir-fry cabbage. Preserved peanuts and salted duck eggs can also give a more interesting taste to the porridge. It may seem simple but when it is eaten with the side dishes, it orchestrates an unusual but simple experience.

c) Cantonese porridge

The third type of cooking porridge is commonly called 'cantonese congee'. The soup is much thicker than teochew porridge as shorter grains (or mixture of long grains with glutinous rice grains) are used and cooked over long 1 to 2 hours with pig big bones or chicken carcass or both. To make the taste more interesting, ginger slices and garlic cloves are added to the boil. If you find this too time consuming, you can use chicken stock solution or stock cubes that is available in supermarket.


From this, the bowl of porridge is often more than meets the eye as the nutrients are stewed into the porridge. Before it is served, it is usually transferred into another saucepan and cooked further with the uncooked pork or the chicken pieces. In addition, the raw egg is also cracked into the porridge promptly before serving. These were done to prevent overcooking of the meat pieces and the egg. Sometimes century egg slice is also added, depending on your preference.


Additional tip:

- To shorten the prepartion time of the cantonese porridge, you can soak the rice overnight.
- You can using the automatic rice cum porridge cooker to cook the porridge easily

4) Additional toppings to the porridge

There are so many toppings that goes well with porridge. To name some, I like it with:-

- Pork or chicken floss toppings,
- Vegemite or bovril,
- Bacon bits,
- Chinese fried dough-sticks (or you tiao),
- Spring onions,
- Fried shallots in oil and light soya sauce,
- Ginger slices,
- Hard boiled century eggs
- Sweet chinese barbeque pork (or ba gua)
- Steam sweet potatoes
- Wolfberries,
- Raisins,
- Steamed gingko,
- Steamed sweet potatoes
- Chopped basil leaves


Related references

1) Congee: Asia's Bowl full of Comfort

2) Cantonese porridge recipes

3) Congee recipe

4) Cantonese Lean Pork Congee recipe

Breakfast is important

If you think breakfast is only for those retirees, or for those who have the time, I beg to differ. In fact, breakfast goers often make time for their breakfast and they are the ones who benefit from it.

Breakfast can control weight and diabetes
Research studies have shown that breakfast can help control weight and diabetes type II. Dr Mark Pereira and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School had proven that taking breakfast can help to lower obesity and insulin resistance by 35-50%. This is possible because when we sleep through the night, we stop taking food for at least five to six hours. Thus, our sugar level will run low the moment we wake up. This can stimulate our appetite and lower our energy. Skipping your breakfast can also cause extreme hunger and may result in over-eating or over-indulgence for sugary food if not controlled.

Breakfast can improve concentration and performance
Studies shows that children who take their breakfast can concentrate and do better in their tests. Those children that didn't have little attention span towards study and are easily irritable or fatigue. This goes for adults as well.

Eat Well
Since breakfast is the best chance for your body to absorb as much nutrients as possible, choosing the right breakfast is essential. Typical recommendations include fruits, fruit juice and cereals oats. Dr Pereira also did another research that shows the benefits of whole grains over the refined ones. A better breakfast diet should customise to your body needs if you can identify the missing nutrients in your main diet and choose food with lower glycemic index where possible. Also learn to communicate with your body and differentiate between indulgence and nutrient defficiencies.

Enjoy your breakfast.

Apples anti-browning tips

Do you like the idea of having sliced apples ready to eat in you fridge but do not like to use salt to prevent browning? Want to consider other ways besides rubbing salt to the apples?

There are few other ways to prevent browning. You can use honey, vinegar or lemon juice instead of salt. You can also put the sliced apples into ice water and put them in the fridge to slow down the oxidation process and for great tasting cool fruit. In addition, if you like apple taste on its own, you can scald them with hot water after slicing and transfer them in the fridge. This will cook the exposed outer layer and stop its oxidative nature. Also remember to store them in container with cool water so that it will retain its crispiness.

Enjoy your apples that doesn't brown.

Always wash your apples

I recently attended a face-to-face talk about the Multi-level Marketing (MLM) business that distributes health products, which includes the detoxifying body supplements. It was interesting when one of the members told me that the unripe apples were soaked in fungicides in a container for weeks until the apples skin were wrinkled. Then, the apples undergo wax treatment, whereby the wrinkled skin also restored its original shape with add on shine due to wax. He even added that I should notice that apples only start rotting from the center and not rot from the outside first.

At first, I didn't quite believe this. But as I did some research myself, I found that there is some truth. There was a research done to determine whether it is necessary to peel the apples.

From the above article, I believe the 'wrinkle' texture is probably due to the brine and nitrogen used for refrigeration storage for 6 months. The article indicates that it is still safe to eat those fungicide-treated apples. Anyway, I do suspect this might be a conspiracy but I was secretly glad that it is still safe to eat the apples so long as you wash the apples thoroughly. I love to eat the apples with the skin so I wouldn't want to exclude that from my diet and peel off the precious skin from the apples.

Personally, I have eaten apples regularly and I saw the benefits outweigh the scary pesticides story. Still the decision is yours to eat with or without the apple skin, but you definitely need to wash your apples thoroughly before storage and eating.