Cookbook author Kat Lieu always has a mouthwateringly modern take on traditional Asian ingredients, but she’s facing some old, tired hate online.
Her supposedly capital crime? Posting a tutorial for rice steamed with chocolate and blended into a creamy dessert. Although it’s Lieu’s own new take and might sound strange to some, this is an idea with deep and ancient bona fides. It’s not exactly Filipino chocolate porridge champorado, nor Mexican cocoa drink champurrado, but it’s got its roots there, along with echoes of the unsweetened Aztec drink xocoatl and Chinese “forbidden” black rice.
Some people have never had Cocoa Krispies and it shows.
After losing her father and making the switch from doctor of physical therapy to food writing after pandemic burnout, Lieu says she has found the creative process healing, because “food is joy” and her “love language.” It didn’t occur to her that this recipe could be controversial. “I recently posted a viral video of purple sweet potato in a rice cooker, and my thought process was, ‘Oh, I have chocolate bars, so I can do that, too.’ It was very, very benign.”
The video has over 4.5 million views on TikTok, and with numbers like that, it’s no surprise that some of the comments are less than glowing; almost every viral recipe that divides the internet has to withstand the usual all-in-good-fun “straight to jail” banter. But this is a horse of a different color. You don’t have to scroll far down Lieu’s posts about it to find jeering insults and overt calls for harm and death.
“All of a sudden, it was not just ‘go to jail,’ but ‘I hope you die,’” Lieu says. “Someone said it was just gallows humor, but another person replied, ‘Do you want to see my unregistered firearm?’”
To add insult to injury, when other accounts have re-posted her video (sometimes declining to credit her), they don’t seem to be getting the same withering negativity online. Why?
I wish I could say it’s a mystery. Happen upon the same nasty wartime slur a couple of times and it’s blatantly obvious.
It’s racism.
“It happens often for me if things go really viral and I show my face.” says Lieu. It’s not uncommon for people to leave the usual unimaginative but hurtful comments about her face and eye shape. “I usually just let it run off, but it’s one thing to leave a barfing emoji, and it’s another to leave a nasty, hateful comment. It just should not be tolerated.”
She points out that words like these don’t just sting the content creator; they also impact other members of the targeted group. “It’s bad enough when it’s an adult, but imagine kids reading this. It’s quite hurtful. I’m used to it, but it still makes me sad,” she says.
Here’s hoping Lieu has the last laugh; despite the hateful party poopers, she has another cookbook open for pre-order, “108 Asian Cookies.”
“Eight is an auspicious number in Asian culture, and it was my dad’s favorite number. It’s an homage to him,” she says. It seems pretty likely he would be proud; her growing list of more imaginative admirers has made it a No. 1 new release on Amazon as of this writing.
There are also lots of intrepid taste-testers and commenters giving her viral recipe the thumbs up, so I am eager to taste. Lieu’s recipe as explained on her blog couldn’t be simpler; just add 2 cups of washed rice with water according to your rice maker’s markings, drop in a couple of 3 to 4 ounces unsweetened or semisweet chocolate bars and a lump of miso or peanut butter, and press go. (Not sure how or why to wash your rice? The internet has you covered with a hilariously passionate explanation from the Wash Your Rice/Angry Mulan Guy, Jeremy Kim.) When the rice is done, stir to incorporate the chocolate.
For the rice pudding version, blend the cooked chocolate rice with coconut milk and maple syrup to taste, chill for at least a couple of hours to thicken, and garnish with cocoa powder and whipped coconut cream.
Lieu says that water or other milks will also work just fine. You can choose your own sweetener adventure, too, and it can be gluten free and vegan if you include such ingredients with those restrictions. Just blend about 1 cup of the rice with sweetener to taste and about a 1/2 cup of the liquid until smooth, adding more as needed. “You want it to be blended really smoothly, to thick milkshake consistency,” she adds.
Let’s try it! I’ve chosen to approximate Lieu’s version with unsweetened chocolate, red miso, full-fat canned coconut milk and maple syrup.
Here it is after cooking and it looks just like Lieu’s. It has a wonderful savory aroma from the miso and a delightful bitterness from the darker-than-dark chocolate. This unsweetened stage isn’t for everyone, but if you like Mexican mole, you might enjoy it served with grilled vegetables and chile-stewed chicken. Made with semi-sweet chocolate, it would be more like a dessert, albeit a very lightly sweet one, and still full of dark chocolate’s long list of health benefits.
It’s quite heavy after blending into pudding, so a word to the wise — a food processor might handle the load better than your average blender, and it’ll also be easier to clean. I was afraid it might develop a brittle, jellied texture after chilling, but on the contrary, it has an incredibly luxurious mouthfeel. Lieu tells me that her batch didn’t develop a tough skin after a couple of hours in the fridge, and mine didn’t either, but if you’re going to leave it overnight, she suggests covering it with plastic wrap touching the surface of your pudding. You’ll be rewarded with a dense, creamy treat, and just the right amount of chocolaty goodness.
In fact, if you blended it with cottage cheese and water instead of coconut milk or topped some with Greek yogurt after pouring into meal prep bowls, you’d have a pretty dreamy and (almost) totally reasonable snacky dessert for the week. I swirled some into coffee skyr this morning with almonds and raspberries, and I could taste that joy Lieu talks about.
As your Candy Corn Science Correspondent and friendly neighborhood dietitian, I always hope you’ll be open-minded about trying new things, but I also think you should feel free to hate recipes you don’t like. In fact, loving to hate things like inadvisable candy flavors and mayo-spiked gelatin molds is practically my brand. Even though there’s a grudging respect in it, I’m a card-carrying kitsch recipe curmudgeon.