Wednesday lockdown lunch — surprise drop-off of home-cooked yam rice by a colleague. The kind of small generous gesture that circuit breaker brought out in people.

What we received:

Home-cooked yam rice (rice with diced yam, fried shallots, mushroom)
Side dish (likely braised chicken or pork from their main cook)

Yam rice (芋头饭 or 芋頭飯) is the Hokkien-style fragrant rice dish — short-grain or jasmine rice cooked with diced taro (yam), Chinese sausage chunks, dried shrimp, sliced shiitake mushroom, and fried shallots. The taro breaks down slightly during the cooking, releasing starch that gives the rice a more substantial mouthfeel, plus a faint sweet-earthy flavour through every grain.

This colleague’s version was the proper home-cooked kind. Diced taro chunks were soft but still held their shape (a sign of cooking them at the right stage — too early and they dissolve, too late and they stay chalky). The dried shrimp and fried shallot aromas were strong — both signals of a cook who didn’t skimp on those ingredients.

Chinese sausage (lap cheong) slices were scattered through the rice. The rendered fat from the sausage during cooking flavoured the surrounding grains with the signature sweet-soy-cured pork notes.

The accompanying side dish (we got a small portion of braised chicken in a dark-soy gravy with sliced ginger) was the protein anchor. Spooned over a portion of the yam rice, it became a one-bowl meal.

What made this hit different was the gesture. Lockdown brought out a lot of small care from colleagues, friends and family — surprise food drops, sharing extra portions when you cooked in volume, sending each other recipes. This colleague had cooked a big batch of yam rice at home and divvied it out to a few people on the team.

Care economy at work. The food was delicious; the gesture was better.

Overall: 4.6 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Wonderful home-cooked yam rice gift — full gratitude noted.

Original IG post