Internal organs cooked correctly is just as good a dish as any.
I was recovering from hangover again today. Last night was a fun night with online wine tasting class learning about Italian wine. Made me want to go to Italy so bad. I might write about it when i have successfully piece together my memory.
Today was overall chilled and i spent the whole afternoon scrubbing my kitchen top and stove. As dinner time approached, i was at lost as to what to cook. So i went for porridge. To make a good bowl of Cantonese porridge, the temperature is important. The porridge has to be HOT at serving. Garnish like spring onion, ginger and coriander rely on the heat to bring out their fragrance when stirred in.
For toppings I have some braised peanuts and pork intestine prepared few days back as snack for drinking occasion however they work quite well as main dish too.
Braised intestine porridge is something i had in a particular traditional wet market situated in Imbi area of Kuala Lumpur when i was young. That was the only known place to serve it. Well made Cantonese porridge is the foundation of the dish while the pork intestine is the soul.
I braised mine this time with water, soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, peanuts, dried shiitake mushroom, ginger, spring onion and spices(Anise, clove, fennel seeds) for almost an hour on low heat after brought to boil once, and kept cooking until the soup reduced to 1/3. Peanuts were soaked in water overnight to ensure that it soften well. Chinese braised dish is something i learnt and developed through try and error, as it has very large margin for error. Adding more seasoning or diluting the sauce with water could be done at multiple points to slowly adjust towards the end product.
After it sat in the fridge for 2 days, the ingredients absorbed the flavor further and made it perfect as noodles, rice or porridge topping. Which today, it was porridge.
Recently i wonder if anyone is reading the blog to replicate the dish and should i add more cooking information to it? That would be quite difficult actually because i cook by instincts and follow cooking principles and tricks i learned with years of doing it rather than remembering detail recipes….
Zephyr Codex 