Wednesday, March 10, 2010

dried scallops & thousand year egg porridge

Porridge century egg


When you catch a cold or just feeling under the weather, do you have any specific food cravings? I do! And I always crave for porridge - chicken, pork or even plain porridge with side dishes. I think it's a Chinese thing. Kinda like the Americans who swears by chicken soup, we believe that when one is sick, one shouldn't eat greasy, fried food. Instead, one should eat light and soft food. Which is why porridge is our staple "sick" food.

It's been really cold here (it snows in March) and I caught a cold last week. So to battle my flu, I made some porridge from the dried ingredients I have in my pantry. This is why I always have these ingredients handy just in case I need them, so that I don't have to go out to buy them. I love convenient food. And here is the recipe to the porridge:

thousand year and scallops porridge


Dried Scallops & thousands year egg porridge
3 dried scallops (Gon Poy)
3 dried shrimps (I use dried tiger prawns w/ head & tail which my mom bought from China)
1 thousands year egg (Pi dan)
1 piece Ginger
1 piece Garlic
salt & white pepper
sesame oil
a-day-old cooked rice, if you are a gourmet, use uncooked rice. My mom swears that a good porridge needs to be cooked from scratch. Since I can't tell any difference, I never bother
  • The dried scallops and shrimps actually needs to be re-hydrated for hours but I never bother, so I cook them directly in boiling water. After they soften, I took them out and chop them into fine pieces. So I basically killed two birds in one stone.
  • Put in the chopped seafood and rice into the seafood broth and let them boil
  • Slice ginger into fine stripes and mash garlic into fine puree and put them into the cooking porridge
  • Pour in more water if the water start to dry up
  • Cook the rice until the porridge has the right consistency. I like my porridge watery and very fine. Some like them thick, so be your own judge
  • Season with salt, white pepper & sesame oil
  • If necessary put in some chicken powder to give the umami flavour
  • You can also put some finely sliced scallions as garnish, but when I made this, I don't have any with me, so I omit them

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