Superior rice porridge

Ah Fook might have made porridge by accident but not Mama LW. She cooked up a storm of superior dried scallop rice porridge when we held an early birthday party for HTK at her cosy place along Telok Kurau Road.

Her porridge was quite soupy. It took some four or five hours of slow cooking and much stirring to achieve that soupiness but the taste came from the dried scallops. She said wash them but no need to soak as the slow cooking would soften the scallops and bring out the taste. Also, there's no need to cook the rice in a special stock since the scallops would basically do the work of superior stock. She also threw in bits of left-over sharksfin to give the end result some texture and substance.

Still, I thought the porridge could be improved tremendously if she had added chopped scallions, sesame oil and some pepper before serving. The fish roll brought by EC and sprinkled into the porrdige didn't really do anything where I was concerned altho the others kept smacking their lips.

Indeed, the remaining fish roll that was split among us to take home tasted a lot better when I stirred it into the cooking rice. My queasiness at eating several months' old fish roll sitting in EC's fridge paid off when the stuff was cooked till it turned pale pink, from the orange soggy state it was in, after EC thawed it.

Ah Fook, one more scoop

This has to do with stretching available resources, in this case food, to meet the demand. As I believe it's a waste to stock for contingencies (an unexpected guest or worse, guests, being a prime one) I always look for ways to increase what I have. Chopped onions and some potato to fill out the meat for rissoles? Add some barley or beans to bulk out a thin soup?

Here is a comic story I heard when I was child about one woman's attempt to extend inadequate ingredients to meet a group of guests who suddenly turned up.

One day, the woman found after she had put the rice into the pot to cook, a friend from across the Causeway dropped in without prior notice. The friend said her husband and child would also be coming by soon, once they had finished doing their shopping. Perhaps some of her other kids too.

As was the custom, the hostess felt obliged to ask her guest and the rest of her family should they turn up, to stay for dinner. The invitation was promptly accepted and the harrassed woman rushed to her kitchen to see what she could rustle up. She struck on a plan. She told Ah Fook, her mentally slow helper, to remain in the kitchen and everytime she called his name after she had greeted an additional guest, it was her signal to him to add a scoop of water to her pot of cooking rice. That way, she hoped to have at least enough porride to go round.

Alas, she tripped and fell on her way to rejoin her guest. Ah Fook, Ah Fook, she cried, trying to get him to come from the kitcen to help her up, as her alarmed friend was all fingers and toes and too flustered!

But no sign of Ah Fook. Her friend joined in calling the slow-witted helper. Ah Fook remained stubbornly in the kitchen.

His enraged employer finally and painfully managed to get to her feet and limped into the kitchen to find out why Ah Fook refused to acknowledge the summons, screaming his name all the while.

She found him, looking confused but obediently adding yet another scoop of water to an already overflowing rice pot!

Discovery

I'm a haphazard cook, who believes cooking shouldn't be a chore but one of easy happen-chance. Anything more elaborate in my mind should be done by someone who charges for the privilege of cooking for me.

So, I was chuffed to discover quite by chance on the Net that someone across the ocean by the name of Michael Chu actually cooks with the precision of an engineer, with recipes that are detailed and well, for want of a better word, precise.

I've bookmarked the site on the right hand column of this blog, if nothing else then to use his recipes as a base and devise short-cuts for my convenience.