More Porridge, Please, Sir

I made jook today. Technically, I started last night. If you know about jook, the Cantonese version anyway, it takes at least two hours of simmering. I usually don't have the patience the day of. Besides, the aroma drives me crazy. Sitting around waiting for it to turn creamy and ready is pure torture.

So I came up with this brilliant idea to get the hard part out of the way. Just the base: rice and ginger. Then, today, I just heat it up, add the rest of the ingredients. You don't want your flavorings to cook too long anyway. You want to retain some texture and taste in them. It's not like what I call the "cook-to-death" method of Cantonese soup-making, very unlike its European counterparts. You literally simmer your pot on low heat for hours and hours until everything in it looks, well, dead. It is believed that all the nutrients will have gone in the broth. You're not even supposed to eat the solids, which are now considered scraps. The frugal home cook may choose to eat them anyway, dressed with a little soy maybe. Humble as it gets.

As is jook. It is the poor man's fuel. It is eaten as breakfast for its simplicity and wholesomeness - just satisfying enough but never heavy. It is eaten to nurse the sick back to health, for its ease to digest. It is eaten at wartime, for it doesn't take much rice to make this grits-like cousin. Ginger is added for its neutralizing quality - in Chinese medicine and diet, it is believed that every victual has a specific nature that affects the human body a certain way. Conventional wisdom has it that rice and water alone is "cold" in nature, and will thereby throw off the balance of the body when consumed. Ginger "warms" up the solution.

I don't care for ginger and I'm not sure I buy into all the ancient theories. I do it with a "just in case" mentality. Of course, the point is not that you'll have a sip of your jook and go, "Oh, ginger!" You're not supposed to notice it's in there (for years I didn't). But I have to admit the hint of it, when you pay attention and are attuned, adds a nice note and harmonizes all the other flavors.

When I was younger, I disliked jook for it was associated with memories of getting sick and being put on a restrictive diet. Oatmeal was another thing they fed sick children. To this day, I cannot have oatmeal. The thought of it makes me gag. However, in my mid-teens I started to appreciate jook. When I'd had a taste of the commercialized version, that is. I couldn't believe how fantastic it was.

"This tastes so much better than homemade!" I remember exclaiming at breakfast with my parents one enlightened morning.

"It's the lard," my parents nonchalantly informed me. By the 80's, old-world fats like lard and butter had been branded as evil. I was incredulous.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Why do you think it tastes so good?" They challenged.

I didn't care and slurped on.

Years later, when I attempted to improve on homemade jook, I decided to improvise. See, there are certain tried-and-true configurations in Southern Canton that everybody knows about and you simply do not mess with. You memorize the combos as there is no way in hell to tell what goes in the concoction by the name. To this day I am still fuzzy on them and several elude me. After all, shortly after I had fallen in love with jook, I left for the States.

But the secret ingredient, lard, never left my mind.

I am aware that, as with many local cuisines, you use what's on hand. For example, if you live coastally, you throw in some seafood. There is no rule as far as I'm concerned. And, true to all cuisines that have been around for centuries, jazz it up with umami. Can't go wrong.

Today for the base I used a handful of dried shrimps and squids. In place of lard I sliced up a Lap Chong. It has worked very well in the past. I don't allow any of these to cook for over 30 minutes. In the last 5 to 10 minutes, I add two kinds of preserved duck eggs, salted and "thousand year". Now, to some this may be blasphemy. In one of the classics, one simply puts ground pork and a thousand-year egg (I adore the latter. The umami is out of this world!). But that's the way my Aunt Teresa did it when I was a kid and that's the way I'm doing it now.

Finish off with (already-cooked) white meat of choice. Fish filets that cook quickly would be ideal, but I didn't have any, so I tossed in some imitation crab and shrimp balls. I found these from Taiwan that have actual shrimps in them! Unheard of, but so delish. At least you know they're using real stuff. Again, totally fucking traditions here.

Last but not least, and this is a step never to be skipped: chop up some scallions to top it all off. Voilà!

For presentation and freshness, chefs add scallions right before they serve it up and never stir them in. The heat of the jook will cook them while one's eating. I don't enjoy the bite of raw onion and tend to let it steep for at least a minute or two.

And it's perfection in a bowl.

As I sit there and savor every mouthful, I am still amazed by how simple the cooking process itself is and yet the resulting flavors are so complex and wonderful. Course, you probably had to have grown up with it. Everyone has his or her own comfort foods.

Food is never about food indeed.