On Wednesday night I had instant rice porridge (also known as chok, jook, congee) for dinner, roast duck flavour. This stuff is mighty tasty. For readers not familiar with the concept of rice porridge, it’s a savoury dish, unlike porridge made from oats, which is usually a sweet dish (actually, I think of oats as a bland dish given a sweet flavour with the addition of sweet things such as sugar, honey or fruit). I topped my chok with a generous sprinkling of fried shallots and a drizzle of sesame oil and then stirred it all through. Mmmmmm. The roast duck flavour is really good. Sure, the whole thing is loaded with MSG, but I can’t see that it would be any worse than the instant noodles I also like to eat. My only complaint is that the packet claims the porridge will be ready after 10 minutes’ cooking, and that just doesn’t seem to be the case! Jac and I have made this on separate occasions, and each time it took closer to half an hour with a lot of stirring to avoid the chok sticking to the pan. But of course, we prefer our chok a little thicker, not so watery/runny.