I suddenly had the urge to eat a good ol' bowl of asian style rice porridge. Found this recipe online which I've never tried before. But it's quite simple really.
All I needed were :-
Half a cup of rice
Two garlic cloves, bruised
One stalk of lemongrass
One inch ginger, sliced
One cube of chicken stock
Two squids, sliced into rings
One piece of boneless chicken thigh, cubed and skin discarded
Sliced oyster mushrooms
And that's all you need.
Here's how I cooked it.....bear in mind you'll need to stir this quite often to avoid the rice sticking to the pot.
I actually like to pan-fry the raw rice first before I wash it and add into the pot of water. This sort of helps the rice to break easily during the cooking process. Also, I do realize that by doing so the porridge isn't as starchy as it normally is.
What I did was pour all that unwashed rice into a pan and stir it over low heat, constantly, until the rice turns yellowish and you can smell the lovely nutty scent.
Then all I did was remove the rice from the heat, transfer it into a bowl, rinse under tap water a couple of times until the water is clear, then pour all that rice into a pot of water. I used about four bowls of water.
Turn the heat on high and keep stirring gently until it starts to boil.
Add the garlic, ginger, lemongrass and stock cube. You're welcomed to use vegetable stock if you'd like. I did. Because I only realized I had run out of chicken stock very last minute. Lol.
If your stock is unsalted like mine, feel free to season your porridge at the end of your cooking session.
Leave the pot to boil gently for about a minute or two, then add the chicken. Stir for a bit and turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and let it simmer until the water has reduced a little. It should be a tad thick, but still watery. Remember to stir every once in a while. At this stage, the rice should already 'bloom' but not broken yet.
Now add the squid rings. Stir gently until the rings are cooked. This should take about two to three minutes.
And now you can add the mushrooms. Keep stirring at this stage because as the dish thickens, the rice would start to stick to the pot if you just leave it to sit without stirring.
Now it's time to season the dish. Like I mentioned earlier, if you use salted stock, reduce the amount of seasoning. In my case, my stock was unsalted so I was free to add more seasoning.
You can use salt or light soy sauce. I used fish sauce instead. I used about four tablespoons. It depends how salty you want the porridge to be. I like the taste of rice porridge to be light so I didn't season it that much.
I also added a bit of ground white pepper. This gives it a tinge of zest without the heat of a chilli. Plus it also helps to lessen the fishy scent from the squid.
Turn off the heat and spoon the rice porridge into a bowl. You can garnish with chopped shallots/green onions or coriander leaves if you'd like. Or keep it simple like moi.
And that's my lunch for the day.
There's probably enough for dinner too.
I served the porridge with some Korean Kimchi, and Chinese herbal tea.
Have fun.
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