I spent two months in Asia generally feeling sick. Whether my digestion was up in arms over gluten or bacteria, I had to spend a lot of time with my knees tucked into my chest, lying on my back, hoping the pain and bloating would go away so I could sleep. Or get up. By the time I got to Vietnam about halfway through my trip, I was getting better at eating fresh herbs that had been washed in tap water. I’m not sure if I had just adjusted to it by then or if the water is just a lot better in Saigon than it is in Bangkok, but I managed to eat a lot of the sawtooth herbs, cilantro, and Thai sweet basil that came with my bowls of pho.
Because, really, there are only two ways I ever want to start a day in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: with chicken pho’ ga or chicken chau ga. I suppose I could start it with chau vit (duck rice porridge) but that just didn’t have the freshness and lightness and stomach-pleasing ability or a simple rice porridge.
Rice porridge? you ask. Really? It can’t be that amazing, can it?
Yes, it can. This is not just any rice. This is an incredibly aromatic Vietnamese rice. This is incredibly flavourful, non-factory farmed Vietnamese chicken. This is really good quality, preferably homemade chicken broth. And what comes with it is simple: green onions and ginger slices. Nothing could be better for digestion. It’s even more digestible than pho, I feel, because the rice is simpler than the rice noodles going down. There’s fresh ginger in addition to cooked, so it’s more pungent, and the texture is more silken, adding to that feeling of comfort. Sure, you can mix in the cilantro, fish sauce, white pepper and maybe even dip your chicken or pork or duck in the sweet hot chili sauce that comes with it (that sauce is the one thing I just don’t get about cháo. It sticks out like an incredibly sore thumb, imo).
It’s a lot like Chinese congee, except there shouldn’t be any soy sauce. There shouldn’t be any MSG either, but whether that’s the case is up to the person who makes it.
And my favourite person who made it was a woman at Cháo Hà Nội at 113 Pasteur in Saigon. It’s a menu of rice porridge, and the lady who owns the shop makes every heaping bowl of cháo to order. The options include chicken heart, liver and kidneys (the most popular. The organ meats have an incredible depth of flavour) and the eel (the fatty eel adds to the silkiness of the dish without adding too much fishiness).
How do you eat cháo? With a large spoon and chopsticks. This rice has been cooked with your meats of choice, so you can take those out with the chopsticks to dip in the chili sauce if you want, but I put them directly into my mouth. They’re the first thing your mouth can handle as the rice porridge cools to a temperature at which it won’t burn your mouth. If you don’t think you like organ meats, try them in this. As long as they’re not overcooked, they’re incredible. Or take them out and just enjoy the rice porridge with all the flavour they’ve provided instead.
This was the duck cháo at Cháo Vit Sai Gon, with green onions and some sliced onions garnishing along with the fatty duck meat. But you also see a powder. It’s not MSG or a chicken powder for once! It’s actually white pepper. Vietnam produces a lot of white pepper, which has a little less bite than black. Most places have a little shaker on the table, next to the MSG…
The shredded banana blossom, cabbage and Thai basil above is actually for a duck soup, but the beansprouts were for my duck chao. I think they’re better in soup, too, and stuck to my scallions and ginger.
So when I got back to North America, starting chugging probiotics, and generally felt like my stomach wasn’t mutinying anymore, I still craved chao. The first thing I made was a simple chicken soup from bones in the style of pho’, and then with the leftover chicken broth (to which I hadn’t yet added fish sauce or sugar), I made chao. I’d brought back Vietnamese rice, and my kitchen smelled like comfort. Just like it does now, since I’m making it again as we speak. It’s simple, but it takes time, since the creaminess comes from a slow-cooking of the rice, kind of like risotto but without the constant stirring. You have to be patient. Or put it in the slow-cooker the night before…Do people in Vietnam do that? They don’t ahve slow-cookers, but could you put it in the rice cooker, I wonder?
Now that you’re dreaming of rice porridge, here’s the recipe to make cháo gà. Thank the wonderful Vietnamese food writer, Andrea Nyugen, for the recipe. Skip the dipping sauce if you want. No one’s looking.
Also, btw, if you ever order this in a restaurant, you pronounce it cháo gà with the first word going up in intonation and the second going down. But the the most important part is that gà is said with a very wide mouth so it sounds fairly nasal. None of this latin “gah” business. More like an exclamation of frustration: “Ga!”
May you spend fewer hours with your knees tucked in to your chest…
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