Feature writing | My Site 2

Porridge: Simple, yet unforgettable.

A bowl of offal porridge with chicken and gizzard on the side.

The bumpy, silent car rides felt like forever. Sleeping faces plastered against the windows occasionally jump at every bump. Those colourful streetlights I saw from family holidays years ago were always the first things I saw upon arriving at my hometown. It was a signal that we have arrived at Seremban. Until today, I still use the same landmark for my travels. The car stopped and I saw familiar lights and cars parked outside my uncle’s shop. That was when I would wake up my cranky, sleep-deprived siblings, in hopes that I would get the side seat next time. The whole family walked down the concrete floor towards the aroma of fresh porridge and the sound of food orders spoken loudly in Cantonese. Each of us walked over and greeted our uncle and his family, as extra-large bowls of porridge and chicken rice were placed on the table.

These days the trip is a little different. The car ride no longer feels like forever, but more like a brisk drive. The only thing that remains the same is the middle seat situation for the past 10 years. The old porridge shop has made way for a better location with improved lighting and ventilation. The small trolley attached to a bicycle used by the older generation to transport porridge was replaced with trucks. Everything changed but some not necessarily for the better.

I remember always being excited when my parents would announce family trips back to our hometown because it meant we could eat our uncle’s famous offal porridge and chicken rice. Most people would frown at the thought of putting offal (a variety of organ meats of a butchered animal) into something like porridge, but it is a traditional Cantonese dish that will soon be extinct because of the rarity and difficulty of making it. The common piece that can be found in my family’s porridge would be pig’s intestines, tongue, chicken liver, meat, and kidney. Each individual piece of these cuts requires a great deal of time to prepare due to the nature of the meat.

The cuts need to be individually cooked, cleaned, and seasoned so that the flavors complement each other to achieve the taste of traditional porridge. My father told me that only great chefs trained in using offal can truly bring out the uniqueness of these cuts, which is why not many people can replicate the taste of the porridge. I have never tasted porridge like the one my uncle would make. Other than the cuts of meat, the porridge itself was light and fluffy, perfectly salted with sesame oil and pepper, which reminded us of being at home eating a warm bowl of savory porridge on a rainy day. The texture of the porridge was not all mushy, as the pieces of meat inside gave it texture. Coupled with deep-fried intestines and garnishing of fried noodles and green onion, the dish was wholesome and never boring.

One would never eat the porridge alone. Plates of boiled chicken would always accompany the dish. Unlike the tasteless boiled chicken breast athletes would eat, the boiled chicken my uncle makes is moist and flavorful; the meat is soft and bouncy with sesame oil topped on the silky skin surrounded by soy sauce. It makes the dish feel more like a hearty meal, as compared to how porridge is often deemed as a tasteless meal for the sick. My uncle’s porridge would always attract droves of customers waiting eagerly in line and would always sell out before the sun set.

My uncle’s porridge stall at a hawker center would only open at night after the others closed for the day. That was the shop I mostly remember from my childhood. The tiled floors and the yellow worn plastic chairs, the white round tables overused with a yellow circle in the middle. The chopsticks were always placed in the same metal drawer. My cousins are shouting to make way as hot porridge is served to the customers. A conversation is carried out by a customer with my uncle while he is chopping chicken. These details are subtle and insignificant to some, but the atmosphere is what made these trips unforgettable.

The old shop a few years before the pandemic.

I guess the experience is different for a customer who is a close relative of the shop owner. I always had a sense of pride whenever I greeted my uncle at his shop. The loud utter of “大伯” (Dàbó, meaning first uncle), made the customer’s heads turn, and it made me feel special. It’s more the sense of exclusivity I get when visiting my uncle, also because he would make special treats if we told him of our arrival in advance. The special deep-fried pig intestines were always a treat to eat. It’s special because he would only make this for the family. Usually, intestines are chewy and rubbery with a bitter aftertaste if not cleaned well. But the intestines my uncle made always tasted like the best meat chip ever. It is always crunchy no matter how long it was left out, the saltiness of the intestine made it taste like a juicy steak, and although it was deep-fried, it was never oily. We would always separate each intestine evenly between us siblings to prevent a fight from happening.

It just always felt like a family reunion whenever we entered the shop because everyone would be there. My aunties and uncles would gather, have a meal of porridge and chicken rice, and catch up on family updates. As long as there was porridge the family would always come back.

Not everything is constant in life. As time passed, my uncle and his son managed to get their independent shop. Some of the family members moved to other places for work, some entered university, and some retired. Eventually, the younger family members had to take over.

At this point, I felt like my attachment and wonderment with the porridge and the shop had lessened. The taste of the porridge became dull as time passed and it felt kind of annoying to spend time going back to Seremban as my school work piled up. The rest of my family couldn’t find the time to go back for a visit due to our individual schedules with school and jobs. Even when we could, it would never feel the same as before.

Due to the hectic schedule, our family would rarely visit Seremban, but we would still go every year for Chinese New Year, but those spontaneous trips ended a long time ago.

Now it's rare for us to be able to eat our uncle’s porridge. Sure, there are times when our relatives would visit with a packet of porridge, but it was always frozen to maintain the quality. During the pandemic, the visits became lesser, and it made me miss the taste of a warm bowl of offal porridge from my uncle’s shop. When my cousin took over, the shop felt different compared to how it was last time. This change was good for the customers because it gave the restaurant a different clientele and atmosphere. However, the commercial ambiance replaced the old homey-kampung feeling the shop used to have before the transition.

Maybe I was just feeling sentimental about the old shop, especially with something that brought me so many great memories. But it made me appreciate the food more. When we visit the shop I had a child-like ignorance of the work and sacrifice that was needed to maintain our family legacy as it is today. The constant medical problems my uncle’s family had to go through day after day for the shop became more prevalent as time went by. I began to understand and appreciate the effort required to maintain our family’s legacy, from my uncle’s family to my grandparents’ sacrifice of raising six children while looking after the shop.

Things will always change, but the memories remain forever.

I walked down from the car and saw my uncle chopping chicken while my aunt was serving the customers lining up. My siblings and I walked over to them and shouted a loud “大伯”. He smiled whilst my cousin placed a hot bowl of offal porridge for us to enjoy after four years.