Monday, February 17, 2020

Baby Fish Porridge

A traditional baby food dish in Singapore is fish rice porridge. My Dad told me an anecdote about the cry room in the sanctuary of the church they attend in Singapore - that around a certain time all the babies/kids start getting hungry at the same time and the whole room turns into a disgusting and nauseating miasma of ang gor li fish and porridge. My Dad and Mum pointed out that they made that same dish for me to eat all the time, and like all other babies, I loved it too.

Anyway since I have become a Mum, my parents ask me every so often what I am making for baby to eat. And they keep suggesting the fish porridge idea. One qualm I've had about it was that I wasn't sure what kind of fish was suitable, and then in what proportions. Good luck trying to ask a fishmonger for ang go li here. But finally Jon got onto the bandwagon too, and wanted to make fish porridge for baby as well, as he's currently on a she's not getting enough protein sort of anxiety binge.

So finally today, I have attempted to make fish porridge. I put in half a cup of jasmine rice to boil, and about half of a fillet of swai fish (what is swai even called in Singapore?). After boiling for a while, I realised the rice had swelled up into a ridiculously large amount, to the extent that the amount of fish seemed too little. So, like any caring Mum, I ended up taking out spoonfuls of just plain rice porridge, so the proportion of liao to porridge would be higher. Then I mixed in some quasi-pureed peas that I had prepared yesterday, so that there would at least be something familiar tasting/fibre in the dish. I then ate the plain rice porridge, with a little bit of soy sauce, so it wouldn't go to waste.

Hopefully baby will like this dish, when I feed it to her later.

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