CHOCOLATE IN YOUR BUBUR AYAM.

If you are reading this story from Mexico, Bubur is Indonesian for rice porridge. Everywhere you go in Java and rest of the 17000 islands of Indonesia you will find some variety of Bubur. The Chinese and Indians call it congee(porridge). It could well be Asia's main prepared food. Usually eaten as supper(much after dinner) or breakfast.

The are simple congees to complex ones. A fairly sophiscated version is made with the famous Chinese Five Spices with shreds of chicken.

What is Chinese Five Spices? Well its the great wonder powder that the Chinese invented to combine the five elements of taste: sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty. Very, very close to the five elements of the taste of chocolate: sour, bitter,sweet,astrigent and umami.

Bitterness in chocolate comes from the caffeine, L-valine,L-tyrosine and L-isoleucine.The sour from acetic acid, latic acid and citric and oxalic. The sweet from galatose, glucose, L-serine, fructose and sucrose.Astringency, which I liken to puncency comes from amines, eplatechin, catechin and other horribly difficult to spell elements. Just trust me.

What is umami? Well in chocolate it come comes two main elements, glutamic acid and aspartic acid. You will find these elements in Ajinamoto. I liken it to being salty savoury.

Make your congee by boiling rice and once it is ready allow to simmer for about an hour. It will not boil over. Combine, strips of chicken, a clove of garlic crushed, thin strips of ginger, a teaspoon of oyster sauce,pinch of pepper, two pinches of salt, and simmer it with the cosimmering porridge.Added finely chopped onions if you wish. Then add two tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa. stir in and simmer. Garnish with fried onions. Serve.

With a dash of soy it can bring much joy.

You can makt a bit more interesting if you throw in some roasted cocoa nibs and some ikan bilis(deep fried anchovies) Even Italian anchovies are great as a garnish. Overdoing it perhaps but as Mae West said"Too much of a good thing is wonderful".