Food Trivia Question from the Oriental Oasis Newsletter
TRIVIA QUESTION: I am a healthy dish eaten both for breakfast and at dinner. In my plainest form I am quite easy to digest and often served to convalescents. More often, however, I am flavored with numerous other ingredients such as chicken, fish, nuts, spices, and lotus seeds. Thought to date back to the Zhou dynasty (1,000 BC), one of my names is believed to come from the Hindi language. My other name literally means soft rice. What am I?
TRIVIA ANSWER: Congee. The word congee is thought to come from the
Hindi language, while jook - the other name for this popular breakfast dish - means soft
rice. In Chinese Kitchen, Eileen Yin Fei Lo relates an interesting tale about how
jook supposedly was created when, faced with the necessity of entertaining several guests,
a miserly man ordered his cook to water down the rice. According to one story I found,
several hundred years ago men in northeastern China were forbidden from practicing Kung Fu
by the Manchurians who had taken over the region. Practicing Kung Fu secretly in their
homes at night, they became known as "the men who ate the nighttime congee" as
they had a bowl of congee after practice. (Source: Sifu Chow's Interactive Wing Chun).
Recipes:
Beef
and Lettuce Congee
