Meiling Congee 美龄粥

Meiling Congee (美龄粥) is a sweet rice congee from Nanjing (南京) in which the rice is cooked in soy milk instead of water, with Chinese yam (山药) and a few goji berries (枸杞). It carries the name of Soong Mei-ling (宋美龄), the Republican-era first lady, and is one of the dishes Nanjing restaurants use to evoke the Republican period (民国).

How it is made

The rice goes into soy milk and cooks in it from start to finish, so that the aroma of the rice and the taste of the soy milk merge. Writing in Xinmin Evening News (新民晚报), the writer Yu Bin (余斌) says the yam is there to thicken the congee and give it a dense, smooth texture, while the goji berries are added mostly for colour. A restaurant version described in Wenzhai Bao (文摘报) also cooks lily bulb (百合) into the congee along with the yam and soy milk, and finishes it with a few red goji berries.

Flavour and texture

The congee is sweet, simple and light. Yu Bin compares it to the sugared rice porridge (糖稀饭) Nanjing families make by stirring a spoonful of white sugar into plain congee, and calls Meiling Congee an upgraded version of it. In the bowl the grains of rice sit in milky-white soy milk and look translucent.

Where it comes from

The story told about it is that a cook in Soong Mei-ling's household created the dish when she had lost her appetite, cooking rice and soy milk together; she took to it, and the recipe later passed to ordinary kitchens. Jiangsu Broadcasting's Litchi News (荔枝新闻) repeats that the congee was named after her because she was especially fond of it. Yu Bin treats the tale as a legend that cannot be verified. He also calls the dish a survivor of Nanjing's fashion for Republican-themed dining: two restaurants that named their dishes after Republican figures have closed and most of those dishes went with them, while Meiling Congee, which was never on their menus, has stayed.

How it is eaten

Yu Bin first ate it at Nanjing Dapaidang (南京大牌档), and notes that almost every restaurant playing on Republican-era themes has since put it on the menu. A Wenzhai Bao writer ordered it at Hong Gongguan (红公馆), a themed restaurant in Laomendong (老门东), alongside dishes named after Zhang Xueliang (张学良) and Hu Shi (胡适). It has also begun to reach the street: Yu Bin came across it at a breakfast shop on Mingwa Lane (明瓦廊), sold alongside small potstickers and braised eggs.