Home Cooking

Anyone who cooks congee will realize that, unless the timing is precise, the grain swells and divides repeatedly until there is apparently no more liquid left. Half a cup of dry rice could therefore be made into a huge potful of rice to feed a family. This was economical, and the peasants lived on it. It is said that a poor student, wishing to save money in order to study, lived on congee and one salted duck’s egg per year. He picked at it a little at a time. When it was finished, it floated away, shell almost intact. In China one ate congee for breakfast and had with it peanuts cooked in brine and some bean curd cheese, pressed by hand. We returned always to these simple things, even though one could well afford to leave them. A Chinese monk living in a Belgian monastery, devout in all his ways, in his old age thought only of these things: congee, and pickles, and little chewy peanuts. He told us of this wish, which we could not satisfy.