Comfort food on a budget

Here is my version of “risotto”. Yummy comfort food.

Pile on the shredded cheese!

If you know how to use a rice cooker to make Asian rice porridge or chok to some of us, then I think you will know how to make this dish.

Using a rice cooker that has a porridge setting*, I measured a cup of jasmine rice and rinsed it. In the rice cooker pot with the rice, I filled it with water to the 6-cup measurement line.

When done, scoop about a cup of the porridge into a bowl, and mix about a tablespoon of Vegemite (don’t knock it till you try it!) into the porridge. Then pile it on with shredded cheddar cheese. Seriously, pile it on. So much umami. It is so good. I think I shall have another bowl.

If you have access to vegan cheese, this could become a satisfying vegan dish.

If you want to try other chok recipes, you can find them here, https://www.tasteatlas.com/most-popular-porridges-in-asia, but I think mine is simpler and it will satisfy your hunger and your tastebuds. Seriously, if Julia Child, George Pepín, Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, or Sam Choy, made this, this would be hailed, haute cuisine!

*If you don’t have a porridge setting, then let it cook in the rice cooker for 80 minutes, or until it looks porridgey. I like mine a bit slushy. Sorry, I could not come up with a more appetizing noun.

Don’t knock it, or the men from down under will get you!

Buying bread from a man in Brussels

He was six-foot-four and full of muscle

I said, “Do you speak-a my language?”

He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich

And he said

“I come from a land down under

Where beer does flow and men chunder

Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?

You better run, you better take cover, yeah”

— Men At Work, “Down Under”

See, it has nutrition!