Weekend Breakfast

I used to love making breakfasts in the morning, but that was when schedules actually allowed that luxury. Now the elaborate breakfasts are reserved for weekends only. I try to do it at least once every weekend... there always seem to be other obligations over those short two days.

Anyway, one of his favorite comfort food is congee. In every Asian country, there is always a variety of congee and people love it for it's hearty, warm, comforting feel. That's probably why it's sometimes considered the chicken soup of Asia.

Here's a bone marrow congee I made over a 3 days process. Day 1: parboil and clean 3 pork joints, make sure to get the ones with as much bone marrow as possible. Once clean, simmer the bones in a stock pot for 3-4 hours with ginger, scallion, sake and salt. My mom always use wine when cooking meat so I buy one of those huge bottles of sake and add it to everything. That's my little kitchen secret. Day 2: skim off the fat on top of the stock Day 3: shimmer with rice ( i prefer short grain rice) for 2-3 hours.

The end results:

Of course you can't have something that healthy and soft without anything that's crunchy and greasy! Here's my pan fried Chinese dumplings. If you take the B/D trains to Grand Street, there is a supermarket across from the train station that sells literally dozens of variety of Chinese dumplings. One of my favorite mixture is celery and pork (seriously, it's better than the garlic chives and pork that every dumpling stall serves). This is also the simplest preparation: a non-stick pan with a drizzle of oil, fry the dumplings for 30 seconds until you see the dark brown bottoms and then add a cup of water and place the lid on the pan immediately. By the time, the water boils out, the dumplings will be frying in the residual oil in the bottom of the pan and you will get amazing results like these: