 My name is Lee Byer. I'm the head of the experiment station here at Uri and this afternoon we'll be cooking congee. Now congee is a very popular recipe through and much of South East Asia and East Asia. It's a nourishing and savoury start to your day. Some would say it's something like Asian comfort food, Asian chicken soup. The recipe we'll be preparing today was shared with us from one of our good friends in Laos, Deng, who's the owner of Kung's Cafe Laos in the capital city of Laos, Vien Chow. There's three components to congee. The first is the stock. Now we've pre-prepared some stock, as you can see. Now the components of the stock are a whole chicken, a whole onion, coriander and ginger. And this has been simmering for 30 or 40 minutes now so it's almost ready to be used. The raw ingredients we use again just a whole chicken, ginger, whole onion and coriander. Some would call it cilantro. For those that haven't got so much time you can cheat and get powdered chicken stock or chicken cubes. Or you can choose a pork stock or a fish stock or a vegetable stock. Choose the stock of your choosing. So I must admit on most occasions we cook congee, we usually use the cheats way. The second component is the rice. So according to the recipe of Deng, the owner of the cafe, she likes to use 20% glutinous rice. Which gives it a more creamy texture. So we've got roughly 20% glutinous rice and 80% non-glutinous rice. I have seen recipes where they've used 100% glutinous rice. So I think the ratio of rice is somewhat to your choosing. And finally congee is simply rice soup. It's got the texture of soup. So once you've combined your stock and cooked your rice in the stock, it's then awaiting the condiments of your choice. So we've got some basic condiments with us here. We've got more coriander, more cilantro, we've got spring onion, we've got fried garlic. We've got some fish sauce to your taste. Or just some classic seasoning sauce. And likewise you can choose some cracked pepper. And finally, particularly if you're a vegetarian, you might choose to top it off with one or two boiled eggs. So there's your basic congee recipe. The choice of condiments is limitless. There are many, many other choices loaded really in by your imagination. So we've prepared our stock already. So now we will move to combine the stock with the rice. And then it will have to cook for 30 or 40 minutes until it's ready to serve. Water is roughly 6 to 1, which is a lot. So the ratio of rice to stock is roughly 6 to 1. So you've got to put in quite a lot of stock. Much more liquid than you would usually use when cooking standard boiled rice. So that's 4 to 6. So we'll start with a ratio of 6 to 1. I've changed my mind already. I think it's probably now 8 of these to start with. And we'll see how that works. So we'll switch the stove top on. Now we tip in some of the non-glutenous rice. Just a little left over. Quite that much. And we'll tip in some of the glutinous rice. Ideally it should have been pre-washed, but we won't do that today. Now we simply wait for that to come to the boil. Particularly if I use the right burner. And that needs to simmer for at least half an hour. And the last thing we need to do is give it a stir. Just to get the rice off the bottom of the pan. And then we'll suspend it in the stock. You can see already we probably need a bit more to get to our desired ratio. Don't be scared to put in a lot of stock. You would be amazed how much water the rice absorbs. Looks like a better start. Come back to it in about 30 minutes. So here we are about 40 minutes after we began the preparation. And our congee is ready. It's got the right creamy soup-like consistency. So we'll now tip it out into a bowl. In the last 10 minutes or so if you want you can add some finely chopped vegetables like carrots or bok choy or cabbage or something like that. Into the mix if you wish a little bit more variety. You can even crack an egg and stir an egg through the congee if you wish. One big bowl of congee today. We will need many spoons. Okay, now we bring it over to our condiments. And we might choose to put a bit of shredded chicken in. Open the reasonably fine pieces. Perhaps some boiled egg. Some spring onion. The green always makes things look tastier. Some more coriander or cilantro. My personal favourite. Some fried garlic. Some sauce. Some fish sauce as well. And finally a little cracked pepper. And here we have the finished product. Congee. In Laos they call it kaupia kao which literally means wet rice. A perfect start to your day.