Jook

This Chinese rice porridge/soup is a wonderful way to deal with the turkey carcase when you've got all the leftovers off it that you care to and it's down to the bones. You can also use up any chicken or duck carcases you have saved up in the freezer. There are as many verions of this as there are villages in China, so feel free to improvise on the theme.

The Soup:

• Poultry bones—a turkey carcase is good, with any spare chicken and duck bones thrown in
• 2 cups jasmine rice, uncooked, washed
• 24 cups water
• 2 tsp. rock salt (or to your taste)
• 1 cup raw peanuts or cashews

• 1 lb. ground pork
• 1 Tbsp. dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 green onion stalks
• 12 water chestnuts

• chopped lettuce
• chung choi, chopped fine
• Chinese parsley, chopped
• green onions, chopped
• soy, hoisin, or oyster sauce
• Sri Racha
• sesame oil

In a large stock-pot, simmer the poultry bones in water for 1 hour, then remove the bones from the stock and set them to cool. When they've cooled enough to handle, strip the meat from the bones, put the meat in a covered container in the fridge, return the bones to the stock, and simmer for another 3 hours.

Meanwhile, mince the green onions and water chestnuts. Mix them with the ground pork, soy sauce and salt. Set the mixture aside in the refrigerator.

Add the rice and nuts to the stock and simmer for 2–3 hours until the rice breaks down completely and the soup becomes thick and creamy. Keep the heat really low (I use a heat diffuser) and give it a stir from time to time, so the rice doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.

Return the meat to the the soup. Add the ground pork mixture, shaping 1 tsp. at a time into small balls and dropping them into the soup. Cook for 5 minutes or until the pork balls are done.

Taste for seasoning and serve in individual soup bowls, garnished with chopped green onion and Chinese parsley.

Other things you could add for the last 5 minutes of cooking are dried shrimp, dried scallops, & softened foo jook (Chinese dried bean curd), duck liver sausage, or chunks of Chinese mustard cabbage.

Other garnishes you might consider include any preserved Chinese pickled vegetables, sliced salted duck eggs, rankyo (little pickled onions), peanuts, toasted pine nuts, cilantro, asparagus tips, shiitake or enoke mushrooms, fresh chilis, sesame oil, white pepper, soy sauce, and chili sauce.