A Chinese Dinner

Mushroom congee topped with green onions and Chinese preserved vegetables along with a tofu and green beans stirfry and Chinese crullers on the side.

I rarely cook Chinese food. I think it's because even as a vegan in Toronto I was able to get awesome authentic Chinese food easily. Authentic stuff is very hard to find here. Everything is seasoned with too much salt or it's too sweet or it's too oily or all of the above. Having said that, I still get vegan Chinese takeout here almost once a week because I never cook Chinese food. WTF is wrong with me? :)

Anyway we went to the Asian market last weekend and I spotted Chinese crullers in a package (they are pretty much always vegan even if you see them not in a package) so I bought some and decided to make congee to go with it.

If you've never had congee, it's basically a savoury rice porridge and you can top it with whatever you want. Mine was cooked with vegetable broth, sliced shiitake mushrooms and a bit of soy sauce. My parents would make congee every so often on weekend mornings (it's a breakfast food really) and always bought fresh crullers to go along with it. No one makes their own crullers if they can buy them. It's just too much of a waste of time and messy (they're deep fried in a ton of oil) to do so people just buy them at the market. They are excellent dipped in congee or with hoisin sauce. My sister has them with ketchup. :)

This was a nice change for dinner along with the stirfry and the taste of the congee brought back a lot of memories.