Did someone say duck?

I love duck, especially roasted duck, so naturally, after mentioning duck congee in my previous post,

Being sick: Medicines and food, it was all I could think about. So yesterday, when my dad wanted to buy some crispy Chinese roast pork belly from a Chinese butchery/barbequed meat shop for dinner, we decided to buy half a roast duck as well. The butcher usually chops up the meat for you as well with a meat cleaver, so it saves you getting your kitchen dirty at home, doing it yourself.



 

Roast pork belly and roast duck - the two tastiest things from a Chinese BBQ shop!

 

As tempting as it was to just attack the delicious, golden-skinned juicy duck with my bare hands, dripping copious amounts of liquidised fat and marinade over a bowl of jasmine white rice, I had to remind myself that I shouldn't be eating roasted meats and such, while I was still inflicted with a bacterial throat infection and nasty cough. That's right: the roast duck was bought exclusively to flavour my congee. When I make duck congee, it's usually from left-over duck from dinner (same goes for the chicken for its version), so this was going to be one luxury congee.

 

Okay, so I know that most people think that congee is nothing to get excited over, and might think that it's silly to devote a blog post to it. However, when I cook something, I like to know a bit about it, and I'd like to think there are people out there who are the same. Cooking and eating, to me, is not just a culinary experience, but also an educational one, because through food, we can get an insight into different cultures, their lifestyle, their diet, their history even. It's so unreal to think that we're able to eat the same food via the same cooking methods as the people who lived many, many years, possibly even hundreds of years, before us did. Moreover, cooking food from other cultures, together with this learning, somewhat connects people, without even needing to know the language, and allows them to recognise in each other, not a foreigner who has different values and beliefs, but a fellow human who also frets about the prospects of their crème pâtissière curdling over too-high-a-heat. Surely I am not the only one who finds this food connection fascinating?

 

So what exactly is congee? Congee is basically like a rice porridge, which is commonly eaten in many Asian countries, such as China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Indonesia, where rice is the staple in their diet, as well as in Portugal. In the old days, congee was mainly eaten by poor peasants, who could not afford meals of rice, and accordingly, it was the mainstay meal during famines to stretch the rice supply. Additionally, it was also the main form of sustenance provided for the sick, usually made with a thinner consistency and left bland, because it is easy to swallow and digest, while still providing semi-solid food to fill the stomach and satiate hunger. Nowadays, rice congee, like most other originally peasant foods of other countries, such as Italy's ciabatta, is eaten by all, regardless of societal status. As such, it can be found on the menu at many Asian (though predominantly Chinese) restaurants and cafés here in Australia. The time the dish is eaten; the type of rice and grains used to make the congee; the other ingredients added to it; and its consistency differs according to culture and geographical location, but common to all congee-eating countries is the fact that it is still the choice food during illnesses. The version I make is the Cantonese congee.

 

I'm sure most people out there would be familiar with how to make rice congee, as it is Chinese cooking 101, but I thought I'd post up some pictures anyway, for those who don't (and if that is the case, refer to the link provided above), and explain the process a little bit.

 



Cooking congee (and yes, while drinking pearl milk tea from Sakuraya - it does gets boring) 

I think of the cooking process of congee as a bit like that of the Italian risotto, in that the rice is slowly cooked in liquid, releasing starch from the grains to slightly thicken it. Of course, the end products are totally different, congee being less substantial and 'lighter' both in terms of texture and calories. Well, that is, unless you add a lot of whole duck meat; that's a different story. Risotto is also easier to get wrong (in fact, I had a bad risotto experience at a bistro just the other day - story to come in a later post) and involves more steps. However, both require you stand over the pot, stirring constantly for the whole cooking time, and both take around the same time to prepare. At this point, I should mention that congee usually takes a bit more than an hour to cook, not the half-hour I guesstimated in the other post - oops, sorry! I timed it this time.

I know that a lot of people can't be bothered to constantly stir the congee, and opt to just lower the heat, pop the lid on, and let it cook by itself; but this extra attention is important, because you want to cook the rice over high heat with a rolling boil, and if you don't stir, the water will just boil over the sides and possibly extinguish the gas flame, potentially causing a gas-leaking hazard (yep, that's what happened that other night when I was distracted by blogging). You want the heat to be high, so that the rice disintegrates quickly while continuing to cook, and by constantly stirring, you're coaxing the starch from the grains into the cooking water, to thicken it and achieve an overall soupy consistency. So you can imagine that if you leave the pot on low heat, the bulk of the water will evaporate before the rice breaks down sufficiently, and you will end up with a nubbly gruel, where the grains are still distinct from the watery liquid. Some people don't mind this, but the way I see it, why bear with something that doesn't taste nice, when you know you could make it better with just that little bit more patience?

Basically, you want it to go from this.....


At about 15 minutes: the rice is partially cooked



.....to this...

The duck meat was added when the rice had reached its water-absorbing capacity and had started to disintegrate

.....and finally to this.

At this point, the rice had almost completely disintegrated and the congee had thickened

You want to make sure you add enough water at the start, because, as you can see from the picture below, you only have a bit over half a pot left by the end of the cooking time.

Enough for around 4 serves

 

For the congee last night, I had removed the skin and its underlying fatty layer from the pieces of duck before adding to the congee, in my attempt to make a healthy, low-fat, low-sodium, sick people-friendly version (but who am I kidding? Most of the tasty skins ended up in my mouth!). However, under normal circumstances, I would have added the whole lot - bones, skins, fat and all - to the pot, in order to best extract the flavour of the roast duck. Nevertheless, the healthier version still had the flavour of duck, but less intensely so, and, best of all, was without obvious traces of oil - well, except for those left by my roast duck wing! Alas, I couldn't resist afterall.

 



Duck congee at its healthiest



Not bad for a sick person's food!