"Get your clothes on! Get ready! Got breakfast for ya."
"Look, you get porridge, and it's happy to see you."
"Get out of there."
Hey, what's up guys welcome back to "Binging with Babish."
Where this week we're taking a look at the "congee" from "Mulan."
A simple porridge made from that most abundant of foodstuffs,
rice. I'm sorry for the relatively simple recipe this week,
but despite having a lot of fun meeting you guys at Vidcon,
it pushed my production schedule into the day before you're watching
this very episode. But I still think
we can have fun with this recipe. Let's start by making a
"barebones" congee; that is, a ratio of 6 to 1
cups water to rice, so that's 6 cups of water
to one cup of long-grain jasmine rice that we're going to bring
to a bare simmer, partially cover and cook for one
and one half hours until the rice is totally broken down and
becomes a thick, creamy porridge.
Now during the cooking process you may notice that the water evaporates too quickly,
If so, add more water, a cup at a time,
until the desired consistency is reached. It should look like,
well, porridge. And while its viscosity is entirely up to your
preference, do not eat this without seasoning heavily
with salt and pepper. Now it's time for the smiley face
bacon which I attempted to cook in the shape of a smile but
as you can see they just sort of naturally straighten out as they cook.
But, when you take them off the heat and let them cool on a
paper towel, this is when you can shape them to the appropriate specification.
And while the bacon drains,
it's time to address eggs. Now Mushu's a very small guy
and he's serving the congee in a very small bowl. So I think
that this means quail's eggs, which have a very thick inner membrane
so they can be a little tricky to crack; just pierce them with a knife
and carefully crack them open into your awaiting skillet filled with
bacon fat. Simply cook them sunny-side up until the whites are set
and the yolks are still runny and then it's time for presentation.
Let's start with a generous helping of our congee. In this, its most
basic form, perhaps the blandest foodstuff known to man --
so it's a good thing we've got a few bacon fat fried eggs
and some bacon. And look at that, your breakfast is smiling
at you. I have to admit, I am charmed. In fact,
this little guy is just so cute, I don't know if I can bring myself to
eat him -- ah, no I'm gonna eat him. I'm gonna eat his old face.
And while of course the bacon and eggs are nice, once they're done,
this is a really, really, bland porridge so
we need to go back to our building blocks to make something
a little bit more exciting. We're also gonna see if we can drastically cut down
on our cook time by employing the use of
a pressure cooker. We're gonna keep the same liquid to rice ratio
of 6 to 1 but this time we're gonna use homemade chicken stock.
Alternately, you can just add some chicken parts to the pressure cooker
as it cooks, then you get some nice shredded chicken at the end. I'm also gonna add
a one-inch knob of ginger, finely chopped and
one clove of garlic, finely chopped.
As usual, do not season until the end of cooking. Put this guy
on high pressure for 30 minutes, quick-releasing the pressure and
generously seasoning with salt and pepper and now it's time
to start focusing on additional congee
accoutrement -- contoucherment? What? Sorry, we're frying some
thinly sliced garlic and thinly sliced shallots
in a little bit of vegetable oil and draining on paper towels, slicing up some
green onion and bringing a couple other new friends to the party.
As you can see the chicken stock made for a darker brown
congee, if you don't wanna do that, add the chicken parts
as I described earlier, or you can make a lighter colored stock by not frying
your chicken parts before simmering. We got a bigger bowl
and that calls for bigger eggs. I've got 2 sunny-side up eggs here,
and we need a bigger bacon smile
and since they don't really make bacon much bigger let's just double up.
And now how about some sautéed shitake mushroom eyebrows
that's both cute and delicious. But, before it gets too cute,
let's give him a little scallion beard. Which to me sounds like
it could be a pirate antagonist from "Candyland" or something.
And how about some black sesame seed pupils that's sure to make it
more realistic and a little creepy. Some pickled ginger
ears for further anatomical correctness and some curly,
crispy, shallot hair. What else does this guy need, uh,
how about a nose? Let's do a crispy, fried
garlic chip nose, since that's probably the smelliest ingredient.
And then peanut, uh,
peanut, um,
uh, peanut, I don't know but the guy's got peanuts in his beard.
A few dots of delicious, sriracha acne. And that's just about
as many facial features as we can give this thing. I gotta
admit he's pretty cute, and I have much higher hopes for how good
he's gonna taste. I know that Mushu used his chopsticks in the movie but
I'm gonna opt for a spoon, because congee is not very
chopstick friendly. And, as predicted, this is pretty friggin delicious.
It's a flavorful and anthropomorphic breakfast that I can really get behind.
And he would definitely join the clean plate club if he wasn't so darn cute.
I think I'm gonna call him "John von Congee."