Chicken Porridge (Bubur Ayam)

I remembered when I still worked in a university in Jakarta, Indonesia. I used to have this kind of chicken porridge for breakfast together with my colleagues before we started the day at work. Enough to keep our energy up until lunch time. Oh...how I missed those old days....

Ingredients:

To make porridge:
- 2,5 cups of rice, rinse and drain
- 2lt of chicken broth
- 10cm of ginger, peel off the skin, cut into 2 and crack it with pestle (Indonesian-keprek dengan ulekan)
- 6 cloves of garlic, chop thinly
- salt
- sesame oil

To make chicken topping:
- 4 whole chicken leg, boil with water until tender, take out the chicken and put it aside, use the broth for making porridge. Shred the chicken meat, discard the bones.
- 200gr mushroom, wash and slice
- 3 green onion, wash and chop thinly
- 5 cloves of garlic, chop thinly
- 4cm of ginger, peel off the skin, cut into 2
- 2 Tbsp oyster sauce
- 4 Tbsp fish sauce
- 4 Tbsp sweet soy sauce
- 2 tsp ground pepper
- sesame oil
- water

Side dish:
- 3 boiled eggs, half cut
- crushed chili
- soy sauce (Indonesian-kecap asin)
- preserved cabbage (tongcai)
- fried onion
- freshly chopped green onion

In a pot, boil rice with the chicken broth at low heat. Stir occasionally and add ginger and salt. Continue to boil until the rice cooked. Add some more water if needed.
Fry the garlic with a little bit sesame oil until brownish. Pour the fried garlic together with the rest of the oil into porridge. Stir it.

In a pan, saute garlic and ginger with sesame oil until brownish. Add fish sauce and oyster sauce. Add the shredded chicken meat. Add some water (if the porridge is liquid enough, do not add water to the topping, however if the porridge is thick, water may be added to the topping). Add sweet soy sauce and pepper. Lastly add the mushroom and chopped green onion.

To serve, in a bowl put the porridge first and add the topping on top of it. Sprinkle fried onion, fresh green onion and preserved cabbage. Add half cut boiled egg (is not shown on the picture). You may add soy sauce and chili if you like.

Note: Sometimes I add fried soybeans and crackers (Indonesian-kerupuk) as side dish. This time I did not have any soybeans nor crackers.