Camberville Cuisine

Sure, the phrase belongs to General Mills, and it makes me think of Mary Lou Retton on the Wheaties box (child of the ’80s, that’s me). But it also makes me think of champorado. After all, both words start with “champ!”

Champorado refers to a Filipino breakfast dish of chocolate rice porridge. I was talking with Whitney a few weeks ago while I had a pot of this on the stove, and mentioned this to her.

[18:25:59] Lynne: I’ve got champorado on the stove – chocolate rice soup
[18:26:30] Whitney: Holy cow! That sounds delicious!
[18:26:51] Lynne: it’s yummy!
[18:27:23] Whitney: Holy /cow/, man. I don’t know if we could get this around here.
[18:27:48] Lynne: Yeah, finding Filipino food is hard.
[18:28:38] Whitney: You guys might need to bring us some when you come our way.

So several Sundays later, I found myself down in New Jersey, making a batch of champorado for her to experience the comfort-food chocolate yumminess. Super 88 provided the malagkit rice, which can probably be substituted with any other sort of sweet rice; for the chocolate, I use what I grew up with: the tablets for Mexican hot chocolate. There are variations that use milk for the base and condensed milk as a topping; I prefer to use coconut milk and coconut cream.

Champorado

1 can coconut milk plus enough water to make 3 cups liquid total, or 3 cups regular milk and water in proportions that make you happy
half a disk (~45 grams) of Ibarra hot chocolate, split into individual tablets, or 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder + 1/2 cup sugar
dash vanilla extract
dash salt
1 cup malagkit rice, or other sweet short-grain rice
coconut cream (or condensed milk) to top
Also: 1 quart pot, whisk, spatula

Instructions: Pour coconut milk and water into pot, and add hot chocolate. Over low heat, stir with the whisk, and as the chocolate tablets soften, chip away at them until the chocolate has dissolved into the liquid. Add the vanilla, then the rice, and cook ~15 minutes, stirring frequently so the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. It will slowly thicken as you stir it; when the consistency is like porridge, it’s done. Divide into serving bowls (serves 4 as an appetizer, 2 as a full meal). Stir the coconut cream well, and top the champorado with it.

I missed free pancakes at IHOP yesterday. Instead, I brought King Cake to rehearsal, and it got mysteriously eaten. People kept coming back and sneaking finger-licks of the frosting that had overflowed and stuck to the parchment paper. Silly me assumed there’d be leftovers because historically, frosted things have not gone over well with this chorus. Hahaha. Once I explained that technically, King Cake isn’t really a *cake* per se, the dough is more of a bread dough than a cake dough, and it’d be more accurately termed a cinnamon-nutmeg “brioche” (with citrus frosting), that got everyone justifying the second and third slices easily. :)

Given that today is Ash Wednesday, yesterday was my last opportunity for the season to make King Cake (you’re only supposed to make it between Epiphany and Mardi Gras). So of course I took advantage! And then subsequently remembered why I hate making yeast breads – so dratted unpredictable. I used the Southern Living recipe, though I added a simple lemon glaze icing and decorated the top with tubes of green, purple and gold icing from the grocery store. If I do this again next year, I may look for a simpler recipe.

So I may have missed free pancakes, but I live in the Boston area, so it’s not like I won’t have another opportunity for an all-you-can-eat pancake fest in the near future; we’re less than four weeks away from St. Patrick’s Day, and pancake breakfasts are quite common on that morning. After all, we celebrate Evacuation Day that same day; it’s an official holiday for Suffolk County (and Camberville schools, despite Cambridge and Somerville being part of Middlesex County), and one needs the carbs from a pancake breakfast to cushion the effects of green beer later that afternoon.

Back in the winter of ’03, long before we started dating, but shortly after we’d both discovered that we were both living in the Boston area, Hyoun and I made a number of trips out to the Pioneer Valley, ostensibly to visit our friends still in school there, but also to go on what I call “Pioneer Valley Food Runs ^(TM).” The town of Amherst, in particular, is home to a number of awesome restaurants in a very compact square quarter-mile. No visit would be complete without a burrito the size of your head from Bueno y Sano, popovers from Judie’s, ice cream from Bart’s, and a slice or three of awesome pizza from Antonio’s. (To say nothing of tea rolls from Fresh Side, calzones from DP Dough’s, wings from Wings – which is opening a branch in Somerville in March! This makes the boy very, very happy.)

One thing Amherst lacks, though, is a good sushi place. (Technically, you can get pineapple sushi at Taipei Tokyo in Noho, but that’s not the point.)

So way back in 2003, it was a Sunday evening, and we were driving back from the Valley, headed east on the Mass Pike, and a blizzard was starting to whip up. As we approached exit 14, Hyoun said, “Want to go for sushi?”

I should’ve known I’d fall for him eventually way back when. It took me two more boyfriends to figure that out, sadly. *amused* Unsurprisingly, my answer to the sushi question was a resounding “YES PLEASE,” so we got off the Pike and wiggled our way over to Oishii. Tiny joint (seats 14 total!), but two seats opened up at the bar right as we walked in, and I proceeded to have my mind forever blown in regards to what makes quality sushi.

Fast-forward four years, and we’ve returned many times; this is what we ate last night:

- Ikura (salmon roe) nigiri
- Sake (salmon, not the alcohol!) sashimi,
- Hotate hokkaiyaki (scallops topped with Japanese mayonnaise, panko, and tobiko, and baked),
- Rainbow maki (wrapped in tuna, salmon, fluke, and avocado; with real crab, none of that fake “crab stick” crap)
- Amy’s Roll (unagi and avocado inside, torched hamachi outside)
- Rachel’s Sushi (scallop nigiri topped with Japanese mayo, tobiko, and lemon). So good we ordered a second round!
- Toro with mango and daikon. Melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Yum!

Oishii, 612 Hammond St, Chestnut Hill. 617.277.7888. Lunch T-F 11:30-3, Dinner T-Th 5-9:30, F 5-10, S 1-10, Su 1-9:30. I recommend weekend afternoons around 3 or 4 if you want to wait less than an hour.

Just got back from yummy Ethiopian food with visiting friends (who live on a boat!). Fasika, in East Somerville, is one of several Ethiopian restaurants in the Camberville area; it marked a good halfway point between us and where said friends were staying. Mmm, fiery, buttery kitfo. Mmm, mopping up delicious sauces with injera (Ethiopian bread), and eating your table, and feeding morsels of food to someone you love. (I went on a date back in ’05, pre-Hyoun, with a guy who found the whole “your bread is your table, and you eat it too” thing intimidating. We didn’t date for very long.)

Afterwards, we swung by one of our favorite ice cream places, Christina’s, where I had cinnamon banana and Mexican chocolate ice creams topped with marshmallow creme and that was the best combo I’ve had there yet. It may have been -17F with the windchill, but we Bostonians have our priorities straight, and good ice cream tops the list, no matter what the weather!

Fasika Ethiopian Restaurant. 145-147 Broadway, Somerville. 617.628.9300. Open M-Th 5:30-10, F 5:30-11, SSu 2-11. Christina’s Ice Cream. 1255 Cambridge St, Cambridge. 617.492.7021. Open Su-Th 11:30-11, FS 11:30-midnight.