It has been hella cold up here lately and with @bella.bear teething (= restless nights = not much sleep for me) I've been needing a little pick me up. Something to feed my tired self, my sweet tooth and home sickness.

A quick rummage through the cupboard and I found the two most important ingredients to make myself a bowl of happiness.

Champorado is an old filipino classic and something that never fails to bring fond memories of being a child in the Philippines.

The closest thing to it in Australia is creamy rice pudding but instead of cooking it in milk with vanilla extract and raisins, we just add cocoa powder or chocolate or both and loads and loads of it.

Traditionally, the rice used for Champorado is glutinous rice because of it's gooey, thick consistency when cooked. But since I'm up in the mountains and glutinous rice is hard to source, and because aussies went nuts hoarding rice for covid-19 and all we could get was this packet of medium grain rice suitable for paella, I was, by some miracle, all set up to make champorado.

Champorado

Serves 6 (or 4 🤤🤤)

Ingredients:
2 cups of medium grain or glutinous rice
3 cups of water (+ 1-2 cups of water)
4 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder
(Plus blocks of chocolate if you have it)

Add Ons:
Sugar or Condensed Milk (for sweetness)
Milk or Evaporated Milk (I used Coconut Milk)
Dried fish (it's a filo thing)
Block of chocolate

Method:

• Rinse the rice a couple of times in a medium pot just to clean it a bit.
• Add 3 cups of water.
• Set stove to high heat and cover pot.
• Once water is boiling add cocoa powder, reduce heat to low and cover.
• Keep an eye on the rice and stir occasionally.
• Check the consistency of the rice and add water as needed.
• Once rice is cooked turn off the heat and you're done.

Now for the add ons!

This is what makes champorado special.

If you just cooked the rice and cocoa powder what you're going to be left with is just that, Cocoa rice without any sweetness.

Sure your house is going to smell amazing but your palette is going to need more so in comes the extras.

In the Philippines we would add condensed milk for the sweetener and dried fish to balance the sweetness and add saltiness to enhance the cocoa flavour.

Think salt to salted caramel.

Milk is added in various forms and combinations.

Evaporated milk + Sugar.
Evaporated milk + Condensed Milk.
Milk + Condensed Milk.
Milk + Sugar.

This is all to add luxe and sweetness to the dish. Extra luxe if you chuck in blocks of milk chocolate.

Lucky for me I had a tin of condensed milk in the cupboard as well as long life coconut milk so I used those.

Champorado is a pretty forgiving dish and as long as you have rice, chocolate, milk and sugar this is totally doable.

Refrigerate for a few days, up to a week, week and a half ~ if it lasts that long. Heat it in the microwave (or the stove),with or without the milk ~ I do it with the milk. But it's also ok to add cold milk to the warm rice ~ you get that hot/cold sensation.

Why don't you give it a go? It's super flexible and so delish it could easily be the next favourite dish in your household.