I've been a little bit slack getting the posts up this month, so now at the end of the month I find myself with a whole bunch of Samoan recipes to post! So, over the next couple of days prepare to see quite a few posts while I try and fit them all in. This one is simple, luscious, rich and chocolatey - and what more could you want?
It's a rice dish called Koko Rice. It would traditionally be made with Samoan Koko, which reportedly is quite rich and without any bitterness. They use it in Samoa to make drinking chocolate and this delicious rice dish. Without this special ingredient available to me, I opted for real dark chocolate instead. Traditional versions also use orange leaves to give an orangey flavour to the rice, but not having any of those either I've used strips of orange peel to give it the orange flavour (and it worked very well!).
Koko Rice
Adapted from Saolelei and Global Table Adventure
Ingredients
1 cup dry rice
1 long piece of fresh orange peel (just use your potato peeler to peel off a good strip)
4 cups water
1 x 400ml can of coconut cream
1/2 cup sugar
100g chopped dark chocolate
To Make
1. Place rice, orange peel and water in a large saucepan and bring to the boil.
2. Once boiling, reduce heat to as low as it will go and cover with a lid. Let it simmer for 20 minutes, or until rice is completely cooked and it looks nice and thick.
3. Add the coconut cream, sugar and chopped chocolate. Keep over a low heat, stirring constantly, until the chocolate is completely melted. Once the chocolate is melted, it is ready to serve.
Serves 6.
~NOTE: Traditionally this would be served hot, but it was also quite nice cold. We had plenty of leftovers which we ate cold or heated up briefly in the microwave. If you do store leftovers, it will thicken a lot as it cools and end up looking more like the pictures in this post. If you eat it hot straight off the stove then it will be a bit runnier than in these pictures.
This month I'm featuring lots of delicious food from
Samoa.
Check out my other recipe posts:
Hola Keely, Loving looking around your ace blog. What a find! I have no idea how I found you here, but Im glad I did. Your recipes are awesome and I love the way you are using lesser known countries cuisines, Ive always wanted to go to Chad (and not just because its called Chad either!) You're a star and I'll be stealing many of these recipes and feeding my nearest and dearest with them. Hope you don't mind. Have fine times in the kitchen and on the road. Peace, lee (www.thebeachhousekitchen.wordpress.com) PS - I do feel a little like a gangsta rapper after reading through these recipes, Snoop Dogg on a swedish vegan meatball tip.
ReplyDeleteThanks Lee! Glad you enjoyed so many of my posts, I do love exploring foods from all over the world :) I hope you'll jump on the blog and let me know how any of the recipes you make went for you, because I love hearing that stuff! Glad you're feeling the gangsta vibe too, I work hard on that hahaha.
DeleteLooks yummy! It's somewhat similar to our "Champorado" minus the coconut milk and orange peel. I now feel inspired to freestyle my good old champorado with your recipe!
ReplyDeleteThanks Marvie! I've never heard of Champorado, but I like the sound of it! I'll have to give it a try.
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