When we first met our daughter, she was a couple day's shy of her first birthday and had never had solid food. She was ready -- more than ready.

The breakfast buffet at the Chongqing Hilton had eggs and yogurt and oatmeal and cereal for us Westerners. Our young lady dove head first into steamed eggs and yogurt, but another thing she really went for was the Chinese breakfast: congee.

This is a rice porridge, usually served with some kind of sharp, savory thing on the side: pickles, preserved mustard root, salt-cured eggs, that kind of thing. A little cube of super-savory and a spoonful of soupy and bland, and you've got a great little meal going.

Making congee at home is easy, even though no one seems to have a formal recipe. Most of the time, people will just say, "Get rice, add lots of water, and boil it. Add more water if it gets dry, and add a little of whatever if you want it to taste like something."

So here's one actual recipe a friend of mine extracted with much labor from her husband.

For what it's worth, here was his attempt to offer a repeatable recipe:

• 4 parts (presumably cups) liquid (can be a mixture of water/stock,
  whatever you like)


• 1 part rice


• 1/2 part lentils (he uses masoor dal)


• diced vegetables (if you like. can be peas, carrots, potatoes
  whatever.)

And as he says, just cook until you get the consistency you want. . .
but watch the pot as more water/stock may be needed as it cooks. He
also mentioned that, if you use mostly water rather than stock, add
some salt near the end, as well as a bit of black pepper.

Enjoy it. Got a variation of your own? Advice for the congee chefs of the internet? Leave a comment!