Aulacese (Vietnamese) Savory Vegan Congee (Rice Soup) & Vegan Banana Pudding, Part 1 of 2

With heartfelt gratitude, we sincerely thank Supreme Master Ching Hai for sharing with us wonderful vegan dishes and easy cooking tips.

“OK, today we’re going to cook some Aulacese (Vietnamese) Savory Congee. Congee or rice soup. We have some soya bean sprouts. And we have some rice, already cooked. Or you can cook fresh rice, but this is the best way to use up the leftover rice. You can use either white rice or brown rice. And we have a lot of herbs here, but I’m going to use coriander.” “And we will use some of the carrot and cucumber, if you have it. Otherwise, most of the vegetables will be OK with it.” “If you cook fresh rice, you have to cook for a longer time. If you use leftover rice, you will cook maybe for 10 minutes. So, you can use some of the vegan meat meatless meat, and you cut it into thin slices, and you could even chop it into smaller cubes. Because the patient doesn’t feel well, what he needs is some smooth flowing kind of soup that he doesn’t even need to chew. That’s why we make it small and simple like that.” “You don’t have to be sick. So now I’m just cooking like for a normal person." "And I think we have everything we need. We can go cook on the fire now.”

“First we heat up the pot. This is a Chinese wok. OK, you can either cook with oil or without oil. If you cook with oil, you put like one tablespoon, or two tablespoons of oil in there, and wait until it’s heated. Now you put the vegan protein in it. If you don’t have this, you can have tofu, or you can have both tofu and the vegan protein.” “Alright, and sauté it a little bit. Sauté until they’re a little golden. So you can either put the whole vegetables in to sauté it or you just put it in later. OK, water there. If it’s not enough water, you can put more later.” “The rice. Leftover rice from last night. Put it in together. Don’t put too much rice or too little rice. You put like half and half: like half portion of rice in proportion to the vegetables. And we just leave it there cooking until it boils, and then we simmer for ten minutes. When it’s open, it becomes like three times more than the usual rice, that is cooked.”