Champorado is something that I consider as comfort food. I remember my mother, even in our sort of cash-short state, buying even 1/4 kilo of sticky rice or malagkit to turn into champorado for a nice Sunday breakfast, or just whenever she feels that I need some boost, like before an exam or competition.
Anyway, she would often make the chocolate from scratch, from cacao seeds from the fruits of the Madre de Cacao in our backyard after I've sucked them pulpless. Haha. She would wash the seeds and dry them for a couple of days (or more, I forget this part of the process) and when it's completely dry, she would toast it over a wood stove on a common kitchen frying pan. Then the roasted seeds would be sent to a guy in the market who grinds coffee beans. The guy would also press them into tablea. Voila! Tablea for hot choco or champorado. The tablea would taste a little, well...homemade. None of the richness of commercial ones, but it was nice and bittersweet and tasted of, shall I say it...love.
So last weekend, I made champorado, but I used store bought tablea instead. Boil around 1/4-1/2 cup of malagkit and to maybe five cups of water, until the rice is nice and soft and the remaining water sticky. Take the tablea and crumble it and add some of the hot boiling water from the pot and form into some sort of paste. It has to be the consistency of gravy before you pour the chocolate into the pot. Chocolate tastes better when it cooks a little more so stir it a bit before taking it off the fire. Add sugar and milk if you like it creamier. But I prefer it this way, rich and bittersweet.
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