Mum's Chomporado

Chomporado - Filipino chocolate rice porridge. A beloved breakfast from my childhood.

For months, I have begged my mum to show me how to make it and she finally acquiesced on Sunday. I turned up at her home with a notepad, pen and camera, which were greeted with a disdainful glare. My mum doesn't believe in quantifying ingredients and following recipes. Instead, she prefers to cook by instinct and create delicious dishes as if by magic. And, it really was like magic...

We used cocoa, wonderfully shaped like little cannonballs, which my mum brought back from the Philippines. However, she says that it's perfectly fine to use powdered cocoa that you get at the supermarket. The food snob in me defiantly believes that the 'real' stuff is better.

The recipe: break down and mix a couple of the balls (or, the equivalent) with ~200ml of water in a saucepan over a medium heat to form a chocolate syrup. In the meantime, boil one cup of glutinous rice and one cup of regular rice in plenty of water (you may need to add water whilst it's cooking if the rice becomes very sticky). When most of the water has been absorbed, add ~10 large teaspoons of granulated white sugar and the chocolate syrup to the rice and stir vigorously. Taste the rice porridge and add more sugar, water or chocolate syrup to taste (my mum added several tablespoons of powdered cocoa mixed with hot water to intensify the chocolatey flavour).


et voilà! I am ten years old all over again.