A Very Congee-nial Soup

Shut up, I know that title sounds weird. This is one of my favorite comfort foods ever, and one of the few things from home I can make with ingredients readily available here in Changwon.

Congee has always been a dish with a very annoying duality for me: my experience eating congee anywhere but home has always been kind of horrid. I know I'm going to catch flak from those who love the canto-sludge, but plain rice soup dressed with stuff like century egg has always grossed me out.

This iteration of congee is Burmese, and like all Burmese cuisine, is anything but subtle in flavour. Although it calls for a ridiculous amount of onion and garlic, the alliums will melt down into a sweet base of pant-creaming goodness (as opposed to pant-soiling pungency).

The King of Congees

-1/2 cup white short grain rice

-1/2 cup weird hippie rice

-12 cups water
(+ more if needed)

-1 whole chicken

-2 tbsp salt
-6-8 black peppercorns

-2 inch knob of ginger

-5 onions, quartered

-2 heads garlic

-4 tbsp oil

-scallions, for garnish

-sesame oil, to taste

-fish sauce, to taste
**see addendum

A quickie about the rice: you'll notice that I do not only use white rice for this congee - you certainly can, however I think that the visual and textural interest benefit from the addition of some kind of weird hippie rice. In Vancouver I usually add 1/4 cup wild rice and 1/4 cup brown rice to the 1/2 cup of white rice, but here I went for a blend which appears to have black rice, brown rice, barley, and millet (among other things). It worked well.

The white rice I use for congee specifically is typically short grain. Short grain rice is much more glutinous and starchy than long grain rice, and it will give your congee a creamier texture. The soup isn't going to be a total loss if you don't use short grain rice, use whatever the hell you want - it just may not taste as rich as its short grain counterpart.

Okay, the actual recipe now. Start the pot off by cutting your ginger lengthwise and splitting it slightly by smashing it with the side of your knife (or whatever's handy). Combine the first 8 ingredients in a large pot, and bring it all to a boil. Once it's boiling, turn the heat way down and keep it at a low simmer. Let your concoction cook for about 90 minutes uncovered. Try to shovel things around every 10 minutes or so to keep any rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot. If your chicken isn't totally submerged, be sure to roll it over halfway through the cooking time.

After the 90 minutes you can remove your chicken from the soup and set it aside to cool. While it's cooling, mince your garlic. When you can stand to touch the chicken, strip the meat from the bones and skin, and tear it all into small pieces.

Combine the oil and garlic in a pan, and fry over medium-high heat until the garlic begins to turn a golden brown. At this point you can add in your chicken bits, and mix it all well. Continue cooking it  all over medium high heat until the chicken is well mixed with the garlic and oil - just a couple of minutes. Then dump all this glorious melange into your congee and stir a couple of times to combine it all. If the soup is too thick or not salty enough for your liking, by all means add in some more water and/or salt until it reaches your desired consistency and taste.

Just prior to serving, top each bowl with some fresh scallions, a drizzle of sesame oil, and a few drops (A FEW DROPS! NOT A LOT!) of fish sauce. Congratulations, you now have a metric shit tonne of congee to devour.

Addendum

I'm sure some will cringe at the thought of adding fish sauce to their congee, but trust me on this one: it's imperative. You don't need much, maybe 1/8 of a teaspoon per bowl, but the savory flavor really rounds out the soup well. No, your soup won't taste exclusively of fish sauce, but yes it will be missing a certain je ne sais quoi if you don't add it in. Normally I use nam pla, however I found that Korean anchovy sauce (myeolchi aecjeot) works just as well. Although similar in taste, the Korean fish sauce is definitely stronger in flavor than its Thai counterpart - keep that in mind when adding it to whatever you're making.

Clean the Fridge, Cook Some Chicken.

It's only been about 2 months since I arrived in Changwon, but I've already managed to amass an astounding amount of crap in my fridge. Much of this stems from my crippling inability to cook for just one person - something a lot of you have benefited from in Vancouver. I'm trying to use up the detritus in my kitchen before buying anything else, and in doing so, I made a rustic chicken stew. It is entirely unremarkable to look at, but GOD DAMN is it tasty! This is my attempt at bringing order to my poor fridge by cooking what vaguely resembles dakbokumtang - Korean spicy chicken stew.

Dakbokum ....ish

-1.5 cups cabbage
-2 cups squash
  (I used Kabocha)
-2 onions, diced
-15 cloves of garlic
-2 carrots, diced
-2 cups water
-1 chicken
  (bones in and skin on)
-1/3 cup soy sauce
-3 large green chilis
-3 tbsp Korean red pepper paste
  (gochujang)
-2 tbsp Korean red pepper flakes
 (deol maewon gochu garoo)


Before I start on with the recipe, I will first insist that there is no good substitute for either gochujang (red pepper paste) or deol maewoon gochu garoo (red pepper flakes). I use mild red pepper flakes because I feel that the dish is spicy enough with the paste - the flakes just add to the depth of flavor. If you want hot pepper flakes, look for maewoon gochu garoo. Gochujang (the paste) is thick, slightly sweet, and awweeesomme. You can find both at any Korean mart, they are cooking staples over here. For my Vancouver folks: T&T has them both.

Prep your veg as per the photo below. As you can see, things are cut up pretty roughly. I quartered the onions, diced the squash and carrot, and roughly sliced up the cabbage. I didn't even bother to cut up the garlic, and settled for just smashing each clove open with the side of my knife. If you can stand to cut your carrots and squash into smaller bits, please do, it'll help them disintegrate and add awesomeness to your sauce. You will probably also notice that I have green AND red chilies in the mix, which I did not mention in the ingredients. This is because, in retrospect, I would have liked to omit the red ones as their skins are super waxy. The green chilies are a really mild variety; I'd use poblanos or maybe jalapenos if I couldn't find Korean green chilies.

If you aren't into butchering a whole chicken apart, get an equivalent amount of thighs and or drumsticks instead (8) - be sure to have the bones in! I left the skin on all of my chicken because I think the rendered fat imparts a very pleasant savory richness to this otherwise lean stew, but you can take it off if you are some kind of fat-phobic loser.



Mix the soy sauce, pepper flakes and pepper paste in a small bowl. Then dump it, along with everything else  in a pot, and bring it to a boil. Once it is bubbling, cook it covered over medium-low heat for 40 minutes. You'll want to give it a stir every 10-15 minutes just to be sure that things aren't sticking to the bottom of your pot.

 I put 2 cups of water in, but you can always put more or less in depending on the consistency you prefer. Just make sure there's always some liquid for the goods to cook in. After the first 40 minutes, cook for an additional 20 minutes with the pot uncovered - I did this to thicken up my batch a bit. Because of this last step, I didn't add any salt to the stuff until after I had reduced it to my liking. I would recommend you do the same so as to avoid making a briny pot of inedible shit.

The end result should be sweet from the veg, and savory from the chicken - something great to eat in the company of rice and stupidly cold weather.