Xi Fan | Chinese Porridge / Conjee

After yesterday’s Wonton Noodle Soup , I am here today with yet another dish from the Chinese Cuisine! Almost all the dishes in this blog have some story in the background and so does this one. If you love to hear it read on, else simple scroll down to the recipe 🙂

Xi Fan is what we call here a porridge/ Congee and is one of the most popular breakfasts in China.It literally means Watery Rice. I have seen versions of these being sold even in KFC!

It is also the name given to a broad range of porridges and can be sweet or salty versions. Here is my mine….

I did tell you that there is a story behind this dish, right? So here it comes…

One of our Chinese friends lived in a place called Dafeng which has the famous Milu deer Nation Reserve Park that I told you about in the Congyou Bailuobosi post. We were invited to their home for almost all the Chinese festivals and I loved to learn more about their food and culture. Her mom used to make vegetarian dishes fro me that were so simple but totally healthy and yum. I have posted recipes like this Potato and Capsicum stir fry , Mushroom and Chinese Leels soup, Garlic Chives and Bean Curd stirfry , Chinese Cold Cucumber salad that her mom had made. I always made it a point to click the pics before the meal and ask her the recipe later when she was free.

So when we go there, the breakfast they used to have was porridge.Sometimes it was just rice porridge with a Chinese pickle or lentil – rice porridge with boiled egg and so on. I on the other hand used to make noodles for the rest of us. Once we decided to try this porridge and we totally fell in love with it.

The supermarket carries bins of porridge mixes and we can select the types we want. We can also put in some add on’s if we like.

Until we stayed in China, at out home, our Sunday breakfast was this Porridge.It became a sort of ritual after my friend made it for me when I was down with fever once.I have even made a post about it titled- Weekend Breakfast.

Here is the mix that I used. This was the one that Hubby got back . I had put the pack in the freezer and took it out for this post wondering if it was still good enough to be used.And yes, it was!!

The ingredients that went into the porridge mix are mentioned on the pic itself.

• Forbidden rice is the Black rice that is supposed to be extremely healthy.The link has more details….
• Yiner is also called snow fungus and is said to have several medicinal properties. Read that link to see how it looks and also learn more about its properties.

I am sure you already know about the other ingredients that are mentioned above…

The porridge is very easy to prepare and requires no supervision at all.Hence this is an ideal lazy breakfast dish!

Just take the required quantity of porridge mix in a vessel and add plenty of water to it. Pressure cook it for 20 – 30 minutes depending on the ingredients.Let the pressure release and then stir well and add more hot water if needed.Add salt to taste and serve along with a suitable side dish..

Side dishes that go well are Deep fried onions, Congyou Bailuobosi ,cucumber slices, Fried groundnuts. All spicy Indian pickles also go well with these porridges. Or you can prepare some spicy chutney like lentil chutney / paruppu chutney that has been ground to a thick coarse paste, fresh red chili chutney etc

Hope you enjoyed this simple porridge as much as I enjoyed writing about it. Before signing off here is another Chinese porridge –Shanyao Gouqi Zhou / Chinese Yam and Goji Berry Porridge….

Take a look at the Blogging Marathon page to check out what my friends are cooking in this A- Z series…

N – Nannari Sherbet – Regional / Tamil Nadu
O – Olo Kobi Bhaja – Regional / Odisa

document.write(‘