Purple People Porridge

Now that it's starting to get cold over here, I've been craving for some good ol' warm bowl of champorado. A classic Pinoy breakfast. It's a sweet chocolate rice porridge that is perfect on its own opairs great with tuyo (dried salted fish) if you're a fan of sweet and salty dishes. Some people are either Team Evap Milk or Team Powdered Milk when it comes to their champorado toppings. I say do both! ...maybe with extra powdered milk on the side.

It's been a while since I've done a food glow up, so I decided to ride the purple train and use ube instead of chocolate to jazz it all up. Surprisingly, rice + coconut milk + ube = Guurl!

As always, the challenging part was the plating. I usually go heavy-handed with the toppings but for this food glow up, I kind of drew inspiration from how people would delicately plate a risotto. Overall, I'm quite happy with the results.

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Ube Champorado

Ingredients:

Latik (aka toasted coconut curds)

• 1/2 can coconut cream

Purple porridge

• 1/2 cup glutinous rice

• 2 pandan leaves

• 1/2 can coconut cream

• 1 cup water

• 1/2 tbsp ube extract

• 2 tbsp sugar (any sweetener will do too)

For that added drama (aka garnish)

• Evaporated milk or powdered milk

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Instructions:

1. Let's get our latik ready first. Pour coconut cream into a pot and bring to a boil.

2. Once it boils, bring the heat down to a medium low heat. Continue to cook until the coconut liquid evaporates, you should be able to see the coconut oil and curd/solids form.

3. Stir occasionally until the curds have turned into a toasted light brown colour.

4. Strain the toasted curds from the oil. Congrats! You have made latik!

5. Let's move on to the star, the champorado. Over medium heat, add water and glutinous rice in a pot. Bring it to a boil and keep stirring.

6. Once it starts to boil, bring it down to a low simmer. Mix in the coconut milk, ube extract, and sugar. Let it cook until rice is tender. Remember to occasionally stir it. Add more water if necessary.

7. Serve with evaporated milk, or powdered milk, or both. Top it off with latik and eat up!!