Whenever fall is here, I start to yearn for some old-fashioned, traditional Chinese comfort foods - so with my last feature being one of my favourite Cantonese style 'old-fire' soups, today I feature yet another famous comfort food, the congee. Congee is available in all kinds of versions in most Asian cultures - today's simple recipe is a flavourful and 'sweet' congee with tiger prawns. The 'sweetness' referred to here is not of the sugary sweet variety but rather, a sixth flavour if you will that is more related to 'freshness'. I like to boil my prawn congee with tiger prawns (shell-on) as the shells really provide a better dimension to the taste. As with most seafood, the length of which the prawns are boiled in the congee is of paramount importance, it just takes a bit of awareness on the cook's part and in no time, you will have a 'feel' for how long you should cook the prawns to achieve the right amount of 'bite' while escaping the sad taste of overcooked, rubbery prawns!
You may add more variety of seafood into the congee as well and you will then have seafood congee! It is really simple and with a little bit of imagination, you can maximise the ingredients you have left in your fridge and create some new recipes that you can tuck away in your apron. I like to marinate my prawns mostly in Chinese rice wine, a bit of ginger and mirin before putting them into the congee to mask the fishiness while adding some fragrance to the mix.
Prawn Congee Recipe
Monday, November 09, 2009 | Labels: chinese comfort food, Chinese food, Congee, Seafood Recipes, Shrimp Recipes | 12 Comments »Chinese Peanut Soup with Spareribs Recipe
Thursday, November 05, 2009 | Labels: Chinese food, Chinese soups, Pork recipes, 老火汤 | 11 Comments »Well, fall is here and with the cold weather (at least it is cold for me), now is the perfect time to enjoy yet another bowl of steaming hot soup from my kitchen! This time, I am featuring a well-loved Cantonese slow-boiled soup (or old-fire soup) with peanuts as the main ingredient. I love using peanuts as you can just buy a few packets and keep them in the fridge, no washing, chopping and no need to worry about whether it will go bad (it won't for a reasonable period of time). You can buy these peanuts neatly packed at most Asian grocery stores and definitely a great soup-ready ingredient to have in your kitchen.
I teamed the handy peanuts with my obligatory dried cuttlefish and some spare ribs this time. Definitely one of my best and simplest form of comfort food - try it and you may discover another handy recipe you fall back on whenever you need some authentic Chinese comfort food! For my Chinese counterparts, I hope this post reminds you of the old fashioned goodness of home-cooked Chinese peanut soup!
Smoky Wok by Smoky Wok is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.smokywok.com.