Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Fossa Chocolate - 44% Dark Pulut Hitam (bar) + Vanuatu lunch - Jan. 28, 2025

Chocolate(s) of the Day 

Fossa Chocolate
44% Dark Pulut Hitam (bar)
Good ++
Weight: 1.76 oz. (50 g.) in total bar
Calories: 284 calories in 1 bar
Cost: $15.00 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Bar & Cocoa, online order

Welcome to Day #7 of Chocolate and Vanuatu Week. For the last day of this theme week, I enjoyed two items.

Vanuatu Laplap

First I made some "laplap." Also known as the "national dish of Vanuatu," this baked pudding contained yam, green banana, coconut milk and salt. (I also added a little cinnamon, ginger and kumquat zest.) I enjoyed it, and will likely make it again.

The laplap was followed by today's chocolate made with purple rice and coconut palm sugar--inspired by the Indonesian dessert Pulut Hitam (a black/purple rice porridge with coconut palm sugar that is also popular in Singapore and elsewhere).

Pulut Hitam (bar)

Today's 44% Dark Pulut Hitam bar was from Fossa Chocolate Pte Ltd (Singapore).

Aroma and flavor notes included: soft cocoa (luscious light cocoa, faint floral and very faint diffuse fruit); aromatic purple rice; faint coconut, cocoa butter and rice pudding notes; and (imagined) pandan leaf.

Texture: smooth, slight creamy starch, quickly followed by a rich, creamy melt and mouthfeel.

The makers successfully channeled the sweet soul of rice pudding in this chocolate, plus the subtle flavors in the cacao, the purple rice and the coconut sugar that we rarely experience with "plain" white rice pudding in the U.S.* 

Ingredients: Cacao butter, purple glutinous rice, cacao, coconut palm sugar, cane sugar.

Allergen-related information: Contains coconut (sugar). "Produced in a facility that processes nuts & dairy."

*The first rice puddings likely originated in China or India. Today we have many different versions of this dish/dessert around the world (kheer in India; sombi in Senegal; Arroz con Leche in Mexico, etc.)

Most modern American versions use white rice, milk, sugar and often egg. Occasionally we adorn our white rice pudding with raisins, cinnamon, vanilla, sweet citrus peel, or maybe a little spirits (rum, whiskey)); but most of what is sold in stores is ivory-hued, soft, comfort food.

 

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