Century Egg Porridge [A Bowl of Century Old Goodie]

Century Egg is considered as an exotic food from Asian by people outside the regions. It is preserved or cured duck egg with distinct colour, taste and ammonia odour produced from the curing process. It is usually served raw (it is cured) with preserved sweet ginger or cooked in porridge with some minced meat. If you are first timer, try out the cooked version first as it is less "smelly".

Century Egg Porridge (皮蛋粥) is one of my favourite porridges especially home-cooked with heaps of century egg in it. I like porridge with consistency between porridge and congee, which is thick and smooth but rice grains are still visible. And yes, I had mine with cornflakes instead of fried wontan skin for its convenience.

Ingredients (2-3 servings):
½ cup rice, wash and rinse
4-5 cup water
1 no. century egg, peeled and diced
50g minced pork, marinated with pinch of salt, pepper and sesame oil
1 tsp chicken stock powder (I used dashi stock)

Salt to taste
1 tbsp garlic oil
Cornflakes for garnish (instead of fried wantan skin)
2 stalks spirng onion, chopped
Pepper

Methods:

1. Soak rice for at least three to four hours or overnight if time allowed.
2. In a medium pot, bring rice and water to a boil, then simmer until rice is soften. Add in broth (hot) if using.
3. Add in mince pork and century egg, cook for five minutes or so.
4. Add in chicken stock and salt to taste, cook for futher five minutes.
5. Transfer into serving bowl, garnish with spirng onion, cornflakes and garlic oil. Serve warm.

Cook's Notes:

1. With this amount of rice, one century egg is enough but I am greedy, used two eggs.
2. Soaking rice will reduce the cooking time.
3. If using chicken broth, add in only after the rice is well cooked. Adding broth at the beginning of cooking process will prolong the cooking process as fat in the broth will coat the outer layer of grains. Also, the end result will not be smooth.
4. If serving the century egg "raw", submerge cleaned eggs in hot water as if making soft boiled egg will harden the egg yolk. Fyi, some egg yolks maybe in runny consistency and will look messy after cut.