Congee. Good fer wot ails yer.

Congee, the Asian equivalent of chicken soup, Jewish penicillin, whatever it is that you cook for your loved ones when you're sick. And, as previously discussed, I am a sickly pg at the moment. With my taste faculties destroyed by the lurgy, eating has become a chore. And I need to get the most bang-for-my-buck, nutrition-wise. My sore throat precludes anything crunchy, or hard, so congee is the answer to getting something... anything down my throat. It's chock-full of goodies as well, so I made a big pot of it last night to feast on this weekend. And the Furry's kids lost their beloved Nannu (Maltese for Grandpa) on Thursday, so we're all in need of some home cooking comfort.

Congee is a traditional Asian breakfast, but is also a very tummy-soothing dish to serve after an illness. It's so digestible, that it is often served to babies as their first "real" food. There are a thousand variations of congee, Cantonese, Japanese, with rice, with beans, with pine nut flour, with vegetables. It's not terribly quick to make, but it IS easy. Here's my take on it.


In a large saucepan/stock pot, boil 2 cups of white rice (I used long-grain) with 6 cups of water and 1 litre of beef stock. Add a handful of dried shitakes, diced fresh brown mushrooms, 2 pork=belly spare ribs, cleavered into bite-sized chucks, 2 x 5cm strips of orange peel, 6 szechuan peppercorns and star anise. Boil until rice grains break down and form a porridge consistency (Mine took about 1.25 hours). Stir regularly, particularly towards the end, as it thickens, or it will catch.

You can use broken rice to cut the cooking time down, or even use cooked rice, whizzed up in a food processor.

IN another bowl, break 3 eggs and beat them with a fork. Add a couple of drops of sesame oil and a couple of drops of light soy.

Turn the heat right down, until the congee is gently simmering. Pour the egg mix into the congee in a slow stream. You will end up with ribbons of egg throughout your mix (egg flowers), Serve hot, topped with sliced raw spring onions and a smattering of crispy deep fried shallotts.

Enjoy!

I has no Flava...

Much is being said about taste and flavour and ageing and whatnot over at Gobbler's little nook at the moment. And it's odd that I should have the head cold from Hell while we're discussing taste (or lack thereof).

Simply, I can't taste a thing.. nothing.. nada. Which is good, when you consider that Strepsil's Zinc lozenges taste like cheap cask wine after you've brushed your teeth. The down side is that NOTHING has flavour, but I can still experience texture.

And that is seriously weird. And very off-putting. I revisited Tuesday night's pork belly Rogan Josh last night, and Gobbler's discussion was very much on my mind, so I focused on the mouth feel of the food, rather than the taste.

And I got to tell you pork belly chunks without flava are naaaaaaasty. This dish, which I would normally use all sorts of wanky superfluous words like "sumptuous" and "unctuous" becomes a very unpleasant experience. The pork skin is rubbery and chewy, the fat leaves a greasy mouth feel, and the bits of meat are akin to rolled up pieces of paper. It was like chewing on a condom filled with tissue scraps and lard.

A bag of potato chips (Salt and Vinegar) becomes a mouthful of wood chips that disintegrate to soggy cardboard and another greasy mouthfeel.

A pear is powdery, and leaves you feeling like you've coated your tongue with rice flour.

Noodles are nauseatingly slippery, as they scuttle across your tongue, with no flavour to give them any anchor in a food experience.

Same for green vegetables (in this case some brocollini). It was fibrous and chewy, and with no taste factor was like masticating a green twig.

Which is pretty much what brocollini is!

Slow braised chunks of beef feel like a wad of tissue paper is slowly disintegrating in your mouth. The individual strands of muscle become tasteless pap and the FEEL of the fibres is quite unpleasant.

Think about what our food LOOKS like... try and take away the flavour... and that's pretty much what it FEELS like.

It is any wonder then, that people in hospitals and care facilities lose interest in food? (and thus lose weight). If this is what awaits us as out taste buds deteriorate, either due to medication, pathology or aging, then it really is a worry.

Without flavour, foods, even my usual favourites, have become nauseatingly hard to digest. I know I needed that beef, vegie and noodle soup last night, to combat my lurgie but chewing on a fibrous wad of nothing, or slurping up soup only to have your cheeks coated in an oleaginous film, is NOT my idea of a food experience. Not matter HOW much I know I need it.

I can only hope that the antibiotics kick in soon, and I gets my flava back.

I 'av a col in by doze.

I very rarely get sick. I am VERY accident prone, and regularly hurt myself (there was the Great-Pole-Dancing-On-Vodka disaster on 2005 and the Fall-Off-My-5-Inch-Heels foot fracture of 2007), but sick? Not so much.

And as I am a nurse, I am also officially World's Worst Patient.

Poor Furry does put up with a lot on the rare occasions I come down with the lurgy.

Well, this one is a doozey. I can't breathe, I can't smell and I certainly can't taste. So the post I had planned about last nights pork belly Rogan Josh is useless. The pics are great, but the whole thing tasted like some weird molecular gastronomy dish.. it had texture but no flavour. Maybe I can make it fly as "Au du Strepsils Throat lozenge formed as Sauteed Pork Belly with jus"?

And a small note. Strepsils Throat lozenges make even the BEST wine taste like panther piss filtered thru the rotting caul of a baby alpaca. With a hint of honey.

My throat is lined the industrial grade sandpaper, and I am in a foul mood. Think PMS on speed, ok?

Not.

Happy.

Jan.

We will shortly be returning you to your regularly scheduled pg, but in the mean time, I would like you all to send me some Jewish Penicillin and something with flava.

Bah Humbug.