The congee confusion

It was the year 2002 when I left India for my studies and the restaurant chain selling overpriced, mediocre, toned-down, localized, and yet self-proclaimed Chinese food had not gained as much popularity, and was not affordable for a poor student. Hence, I left India unscathed by the bastardized food. If you are reading this blog, I am sure you are smart enough to guess which particular big-name restaurant chain I am talking about.

Forward to 2006, I just moved to Michigan with my then girlfriend and started to indulge in our culinary inclinations. It was one late summer evening in Ann Arbor, MI, that we ended up at a cheap Chinese take out joint somewhere in the Packard Street or its vicinity. It is one of those very common neighborhood joints which sells $5 lunch specials and has a huge one-page menu printed in red.

My girlfriend got excited seeing a particular item on the menu and readily ordered it. The elderly lady behind the counter looked very surprised by the choice and tried her best in her limited English skills to convince us that it was not really a good idea, and if we were really, really sure that we wanted it. The dish was "CONGEE".

While our order was getting ready, my girlfriend told me how she had that dish in that "revered" restaurant's branch in Bombay and it was thinly sliced lambs fried and tossed with a spicy sauce. Our conversation was interrupted by the whirling sound of the mixer and we got suspicious. When the order was packed and delivered to us we were standing with a big translucent plastic can of semi-thick rice soup. Those of you who do not speak Bengali, please excuse me for the next sentence. The concoction we were given was a hybrid of "phena-bhaat" and "panta-bhaat". It was a quasi-bland blend of overcooked rice and water and that is how it exactly tasted like.

Dumbfounded we came back home and my girlfriend was visibly embarrassed and had to endure more than a fair share of focused and sharp teasing from me.

Google and other internet sources told us that what the what we had in the form or a rice soup is the congee, and not a lamb or chicken dish as she thought. I then also spoken to my thesis advisor, who is from China. He also confirmed that it is a bland rice soup mostly served to sick people as an easy to eat and digest food.

Years passed by. Around 2009 or so we found ourselves in one of the Calcutta branches of the same "authentic" Chinese restaurant. She was no longer only my girlfriend by then. And, not to much surprise, there was the dish "Konji crispy lamb". It can be guessed now that we did order the dish and was served a dish of crispy lamb and not even a trace of rice in the dish.

So, the theory that the konji crispy lamb was figment of my girlfriend's imagination or mistaken identification was no longer valid. As years passed by we had seen (not necessarily tasted) two versions of the congee. One in "authentic" and other Chinese restaurants in India which served lamb or chicken fried crispy and then tossed in a sauce. The other is a rice soup/porridge in Chinese restaurants and street food carts outside India. Anyone in India who is somewhat frequent to Chinese restaurants are quite familiar with the crispy protein dish.

So the confusion was never resolved. By confusion, I do not mean the definition of congee. It was obvious that it was the rice porridge. The confusion was as to why these "authentic" and other Chinese restaurants in India would serve something with the same name and that is so different.

So the confusion continued, until last week. We went on a food trip to Viet Nam. There will be other stories and articles that I will write in here in days/weeks to come. So we were staying that the Novotel Saigon Center in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). At the breakfast buffet they had quite a large spread which was a mix of European and Asian food.

When we went to check out the soup options, one of them was congee: a big black vessel filled with rice porridge, evidently bland looking. And next to it were a few toppings that you could take with the congee. And voila!!! there was crispy lamb.

And, no, we did not have the appetite for the congee-crispy lamb.

Potato salad with chorizo

On the evening of Valentine's day, I cooked dinner for my harshest critic. The entrée was a potato salad. In this post, I shall describe the dish, and discuss the flow of thought behind the architecture of the dish.

Construction: 

There are five layers in this dish, listed in ascending order:

1. Potato

2. Spiced mayonnaise

3. Minced red onion

4. Bits of chorizo 

5. Lime juice vinaigrette

Deconstruction:

In this section, I describe the preparation of each layer and its contribution to the dish.

1. Potato: Small potatoes are boiled for a few minutes, skinned, thickly sliced and then crisped on a frying pan with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil.

There are several points to be noted in the ingredient and method described above.

a. The size of the potato - small

If you use bigger potatoes, they will not get cooked evenly when boiled. The bigger the potatoes, the longer it will take for boiling, to cook them in the insides. And by the time the inside starts to get done, the outer layer would already be overcooked and mushy. You want to avoid that at all costs.

b. The potatoes are boiled skin on.

Boiling the potatoes skin on helps you retain the starch content of the potatoes thus making them creamier.

c. Potatoes are cooked twice - boiled and crisped

Crisping them will allow you to achieve a few things. You have the opportunity to season the potatoes now, which is almost impossible to do while boiling them. You can finish cooking the potatoes thoroughly and add a bit of texture to the dish by crisping them up. But, one does need to ensure that the potatoes are not overcooked. You can achieve this by using medium high heat and a short cooking time. Potatoes must be placed in a single layer so that there is no steam build up and the potatoes do not turn soggy.

d. They are thickly sliced 

Slicing them thickly ensures that the slices retain their shape through the crisping process and the assembly later on. Thicker slices will allow for easier manoeuvrability on the frying pan.

The end product should be a layer of thick creamy, well-seasoned potatoes  with a thin crispy outside. This is the layer that is going to provide the volume of the dish

2. Spiced mayonnaise: This is the first layer of dressing of the salad. I used mayonnaise folded with sriracha chili sauce and red chili powder. 

a. The mayonnaise provides a creamy seasoned base for the dressing. It is an ingredient that coats the other elements on the dish very well, and helps other chunky elements like potatoes and chorizo come together in your mouth. Remember, this is the container of the flavor and taste of the dish, it needs to be bold and spreadable enough in your mouth so that it defines the baseline of the flavor profile. This is the dominant taste that will hit you.

b. The chili powder is added to spice it up from the "vanilla" mayonnaise, and the sriracha sauce adds a tang, a kick.

3. Minced red onions: This adds two components to the dish: pungency and crunch. Make sure to mince it finely, so that it only adds the crunch but not extra effort to chew them. The main component to chew should be the chorizo bits.

4. Chorizo bits: This is the protein element of the dish. I broke it up into small bits and then tossed it with some fennel seeds on high heat for less than a minute.

a. Chorizo is a spicy sausage with strong aroma and decisive flavor.

b. Small bits ensure that it takes a short time to cook and is easier to chew. Since the other components are soft and creamy, having large chunks would mean that it will stay back in the mouth due to its longer chewing time even after other parts are swallowed.

c. Tossing in a frying pan on high heat ensures a crispy outside without overcooking the meat and thus making it tough.

d. Fennel seeds add an extra layer of aroma that is well co-ordinated with the strong aroma of the sausage

5. Lime juice vinaigrette: Lime juice whisked with some extra virgin olive oil. The lime juice adds a bit of freshness to the salad and the extra acidity helps you cut through the elements with stronger personality like the chorizo. You can also use just lime juice without the olive oil. But, a good extra virgin olive oil takes you that last extra mile.

Finally, note that the whole dish is presented layered, and not mixed up. This ensures a little variation in each bite and allows you to savor each component when they all come together in your mouth.

Analytic gastronomy

My tryst with the culinary arts:

Growing up in a lower middle-class Bengali family in Kolkata, food had been quasi-magic to me. By quasi-magic, I mean that I had little idea about what happens before the food is served, as it had always been prepared by someone else.

Like most self-proclaimed foodies, I always had strong opinions about what is good and what is not. Looking around, it is difficult to find people who do not think of themselves as connoisseurs of food. For most people, the so-called 'personal' taste is nothing but a reflection of 'popular' taste and/or habit. Life, however, taught me that hard work and persistence is indispensable for developing a decent to good taste in food.

My conscious involvement with food started in 2001, when I moved to Bangalore for the final year of my master's degree. The food served in the hostel was appalling to say the least, prepared by salaried persons whose livelihood did not depend on the quality of food served. To make things better, we fought hard to start the practice of serving meat for lunch on Sundays. It goes without saying that the Sunday lunches did not go well, thanks to the culinary expertise (or lack, thereof) of the vegetarian cooks. So, I decided that I would rather be responsible for the bad food myself, if I do have to endure it. That way, there would at least be a slim chance of improving the quality of food.

In hindsight, starting my culinary journey with cooking mutton (goat meat) for a crowd of fifty, was one of the better ways of doing it, as red meat is perhaps one of the most forgiving ingredients one would ever come across. Preparing a large quantity of food also helped to fudge minor deviations.

My foray into the culinary arts, thus stimulated by the basic need for palatable food, evolved into a rich culinary and gastronomical experience during my long stay in the US and travels to other countries around the world. I should probably write a few lines about my own style of cooking and a generic overview of the kind of food I like. If I have to pick one cuisine, I am absolutely head over heels for, that would be the Japanese cuisine. South-East Asian and French cuisine follow that top preference not very far behind. As for my style of cooking, most of my ingredients are Bengali, South-East Asian, and some Continental, with style of execution that is deeply influenced by French cuisine. Carefully selected ingredients with cooking that is honest with the ingredients is my style.

Gastronomy analytique (Analytic gastronomy):

Most articles, blogs, or other similar writings on food, focus on recipes and techniques. Let me make an attempt to explain my approach to gastronomy in this blog, using an analogy: if I may compare gastronomy to literature, then I will focus less on the grammar, and try to explore the linguistics and comparative aspects of it. And I used French just to sound more intellectual and pretentious.

I might add, that this blog is not meant for those who:

1. Are just looking for a recipe.

2. Believe that the food they grew up having, is the best in the world.

3. Think that their mother is the best chef in the world (purely by the designation of being his/her mother, and not by her culinary skills).

4. Have religious and other prejudices towards food.