Basic Congee Recipe

This is a rice porridge with stuff in it.

If you had leftover steamed rice (white or brown), you can also use this as well. It will shorten the cook time. When the water boils, add cooked rice, then turn heat to low and simmer for 60-90 minutes, depending on thickness desired. If it's too thick, add more water. Congee has a consistency between soup and stew, appearing thick and creamy. Do not reheat this on medium or high heat, the starch in the rice will burn.

Yields:
4-6 servings, depending on how much rice and water is used

Main Ingredients:

1 c. short grain or 1/2 c. long grain rice
8 c. water, or unsalted/low sodium chicken stock

Any of the following additions:
shitake mushrooms, chopped
Up to 1-2 cups, coarsely chopped bok choy or napa cabbage
1-2 hundred-year-old egg, cubed/chopped
1-2 salted hard-boiled duck egg, cubed/chopped
dried scallops, reconstituted and chopped
salt, pepper to taste
sweet potato, peeled and diced
preserved salted/spicy turnip, thinly sliced
dry roasted peanuts
chopped green onion, as garnish
chopped cilantro, as garnish
finely shredded ginger, as garnish
soy sauce to taste, about 1-2 tbsp
Chinese rice wine or sherry, about 1-2 tbsp

Meat (choose one):
Up to 2 cups, cooked chicken/turkey/duck meat, chopped or shredded
1/2 lb boneless pork loin, cubed or minced

If using uncooked chicken:
Marinate the chicken with the 3 tbsp oyster sauce, 2 tbsp Chinese wine/sherry, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp white/black pepper, 1 tsp sugar, and 1 tbsp sesame oil. Chop chicken into small bite-sized pieces. Marinate for 30 min or longer. Add after rice has come to a boil.

(x-post to LJ Foodporn)

O Madeline

Among other things, I am a dessert-a-holic. When I find a restaurant that serves really good desserts, it's not unlike me to work my way through their entire dessert menu, except for those sacrilegious ones that have embedded nuts, or other undesirable flavor combinations. While I did craft a dessert tonight, I don't think I'll be sharing it with the masses, e.g., my division. It's relatively inexpensive to make, easy to do, and has very little prep time. The dessert output is what I would call a limited edition batch, which, contrary to my other posting about how I eat less than 10% of any batch; I shall have to make another exception. As I stare at my dozen cookie rejects, in their misshapen forms, they still smell delicious and just make me want to brew some decaf to scarf these down before bed. I made madelines.. with real butter, organic sugar, a touch of lemon juice (from a real lemon!), and grated lemon peel in the batter. Mmmm.. and then! I dipped them in melted dark chocolate. I'll have to see if the chocolate sets okay in the morning. With this particular dessert cookie, they just might not make it out of my apt; if they do, the cookies'll be shared with a small handful of people.

Yield: 4 dozen
Material cost: low
Mad scientist factor: **

Food rebels

Like most people, I make daily sacrifices to my stomach. There are some types of food that just rebels against being digested in a pleasant and nourishing fashion. There is a rather short list of substances that disagrees with me (onions, colorants, preservatives, most dairy especially skim milk, although I can drink and eat organic dairy, so I must be allergic to the other-chemicals-the-dairy-industry-doesn't-want-you-to-know-about, and oil, with the least offensive oil being extra virgin olive oil); the other list are foods that I just avoid because the texture is horribly wrong, no amount of deep frying can make it taste good, or eating it reminds me that it is far worse than the worst of the sci fi scenes that show alien consumables.

I should also add that tastes evolve over time and for whatever reason lurking in my subconscious, I only started using (and enjoying) yellow mustard as a condiment at age 26, and very recently started using ground black pepper. I love nutmeg, and no I haven't consumed enough in one sitting to actually have hallucinations. I like oregano in my tomato soup instead of basil. Oregano, salt, and pepper taste really good on fried eggs. I also like a pinch of cayenne pepper in my hot cocoa. That's some tasty schtuff! Heavens forbid I should become allergic to dead side of cow, or the shucked masses of the phyllum mollusca!

(Update: 2/27/08) I only recently started using (and strangely enough, liking) powdered milk in my tea. Hmm. It's very peculiar since I'm a full-fat milk drinker.

Wahaa...!

The chisel does an interesting job of chipping blocks of chocolate into usable baking bits, although it not only went through the parchment paper, but also through several layers of junk mail. 

Tonight's batch are aptly named Health-defying Chocolate Chunk Cookies, since it has three types of chocolate in the mix: dark European chocolate, dark Ghirardelli chocolate, and organic baking cocoa. The chocolate, since I use quality ingredients in my desserts, costs more than the sum total of material costs for all other ingredients combined. Unbelievable but true, this batch is still slightly cheaper than a batch of rice krispies treats. 

I'd still like to try this recipe with an axe. But, I'd need to devise a way for the chocolate to not go flying everywhere when I imagine that I'm beheading despondent postal chickens or foul database processes with said axe. 

Yield: 3 1/2 dozen 
Material cost: moderate 
Mad scientist factor: **

Chunks vs. chips

When Ruth Wakefield first made what are now called chocolate chip cookies, she hacked a chocolate bar to pieces to as a substitution for a chocolate ingredient she lacked. Ooh that rhymes. Anyhow. The cookies should have been called chocolate chunk cookies since she used small chunks of chocolate. Having been recipe-thwarted by people's misunderstandings over what constitutes a chunk vs. how chips are used, I have crafted my own methodology of what chocolate chunk cookies are supposed to be. Daily frustrations at work, like being asked to go hunt down datasets that don't exist in our database from people who know even less about the database than I do, just make me want to beat something to a bloody pulp. I had this creative spark during lunch where it would be neat, if not frighteningly cool, if my roommate were to come home while I was madly hacking blocks of Ghirardelli chocolate to death... with an axe. I didn't find the axe I was looking for, so alas, I didn't buy an axe tonight. However, I did acquire a 1" chisel and a strange hammer to go with it, which I will be using the hack apart this chocolate. I was quite disappointed that I couldn't find any ice picks. Those would be neat to have in my collection. Snipping apart chocolate with utility shears just doesn't seem right at all. I want an enchanted chisel. This one is only a meager Craftsman 1d4 chisel.