Arroz negro

Salted coconut cream poured over sweet purple grain, warm not hot.

Smoky sugar and grape-skin grain: both are already halfway to molasses.

Ripe fruit acid stops the sweet porridge from settling into one note.

A knotted leaf in the pot gives the perfume the black husk cannot.

Citric acid brightens the anthocyanin and the colour shifts with it.

Isoamyl acetate over earthy grain: the sweetness arrives from above.

Sharp heat cuts a sweet porridge faster than any acid will.

Savoury use: the grain is nutty enough to hold up to shellfish sweetness.

Both are toasted, both are black, both taste of tannic oil. Deliberate.

The same anthocyanins. The grain tastes of berry skin before the berry arrives.

Shared pigment and shared sulfury-fruit note. Push it and they merge.

Tannin and grape skin on both sides. Cook the grain in it and see.