Chicken Congee
The dish we recommend more than any other for a digestive system that needs a rest — after illness, after surgery, or after a bad week.
Season Year-round
Ingredients
- 1 cup white rice
- 3 cups water
- 3 cups chicken stock
- 4–6 dried shiitake mushrooms
- 10–20 Chinese red dates
- Scallion
- Ginger
- Sea salt
- Chicken meat from the stock, if you want it
Method
In a slow cooker on low, or on the stovetop, bring the rice, water and stock to a boil. Meanwhile soak the mushrooms in a little water for ten minutes, then add them to the pot with the dates and a little sea salt. Simmer very low, covered, for about two hours, stirring occasionally. Add the scallion, ginger and chicken at the end. Discard the mushrooms and dates if you would rather not eat them. Salt to taste.
Congee — zhōu 粥 — is the foundational dish of Chinese food therapy, and it has been treated as medicine rather than merely as breakfast for the better part of two thousand years. Li Shizhen catalogued dozens of medicinal congees in the sixteenth century, each with its own additions. It is what is given to someone convalescing, to a woman after childbirth, to a small child, and to anyone whose digestion has stopped coping.
The reason is mechanical. Long slow cooking breaks the grain down so completely that the pot has done most of the digesting for you. In Chinese terms it supports the Spleen and Stomach, which are held to transform food into qi and blood — the root of everything made after birth. In plainer terms: it asks almost nothing of a stomach that has nothing left to give.
Red dates are at any Chinese grocer. If you cannot find them, ten unsulphured dried apricots will do.
