In our family, the clash of cultures is most apparent when it comes to a simple pot of porridge.

My husband wants it made of millet, unseasoned and served with his favorite Beijing pickles. I prefer the smooth silkiness of slowly simmered rice, seasoned with a good pork broth and served with tiny savory meatballs, a few slivers of just-cooked liver and a sprinkling of spring onions.

My son, born and raised in Singapore, has grown up favoring the Chaozhou version, with grains of rice immersed in a heavily seasoned fish broth full of pepper and preserved Tianjin cabbage.

But we do agree on one thing. This is comfort food eaten when you are stressed, under the weather, recuperating from illness or simply suffering from too much of a good thing — like all the delicious Lunar New Year goodies we have just ploughed through.

My husband grew up in Beijing at a time when food was scarce and every little bit of grain treasured. His grandmother was a frugal woman who wasted nothing. When she made millet porridge, it was served with cabbages she'd pickled herself, or little cubes of radishes she had carefully saved from the tops and tails that would have been otherwise discarded.

Times were hard then, but our man swears he has eaten nothing tastier since, even though we have tried to replicate the millet gruel and pickles many times. Perhaps the old adage is true — hunger is the best sauce ever.

My memories of porridge are confined to those made with rice.

When we were younger, in Hong Kong, breakfast was a bowl of plain rice porridge, creamy smooth and snowy white, seasoned with a pinch of salt and a dash of oil and served with a crispy dough cruller — or you tiao.

Every mouthful was one full of contrasts — the velvetiness of the porridge and the crisp crunchiness of the dough. Sometimes, if we were lucky, we also got a spoonful of fried peanuts dusted with sugar and salt which was a heady foil to the plain porridge.

Congee was also served for lunch or dinner, and the porridge base was always rice that was cooked in water or broth until the grains had almost completely dissolved. It was the ingredients that made the difference.