(São Tomé & Príncipe The Voice of the Forest)
One of my favourite cooking demonstrations isn’t a recipe it’s more a story.
It began on the island of São Tomé, in a small open-air community kitchen area shaded by cocoa trees, where a chef friend of mine Angelo once made chocolate fondants in the most extraordinary way.
He would pour the batter rich, dark, and silky into a hollow cocoa pod, wrap it gently in a banana leaf, and bake it over an open flame or in a wood-fired oven.
When the pod began to char slightly and the leaf released its sweet, smoky aroma, you could smell the story of the island itself.
But while it baked, he told me about a bird the Ossobô.
The Voice of the Forest
In the emerald heart of São Tomé and Príncipe, the forest hums with its own kind of prayer the song of the Ossobô.
This small, copper-winged bird (Chrysococcyx cupreus), from the cuckoo family, is far more than a flash of colour in the canopy.
To the islanders, it is the messenger of the forest a spirit of resilience and reverence.
At dawn, when mist clings to the cocoa trees and the air smells of rain and earth, the Ossobô sings.
Its call threads through the forest like incense part melody, part memory.
Some say its name comes from the French oiseau beau“beautiful bird” while others believe it’s something older, born from the island’s own breath.
Through generations, the Ossobô has appeared in songs and poetry, symbolising the island’s soul.
In one famous piece,The Song of the Ossobô, the bird’s voice becomes a hymn of longing for home, for roots, for the wisdom of the trees.
To the people of São Tomé, to silence the forest would be to forget their beginnings.
To protect the Ossobô is to keep the island’s heartbeat alive.
The Heart of the Fondant
Now, whenever I make chocolate fondant, I think of that story.
That molten centre soft, alive, unpredictable feels like the forest’s heartbeat.
The outer shell, firm but tender, is the land that holds it.
And when you break through, that rush of molten chocolate is the Ossobô’s song a reminder that within stillness, there’s always movement; within sweetness, there’s always life.
Cooking, to me, is another way of listening.
Each ingredient carries a voice cocoa, fire, leaf, air.
And when those voices sing together, even for a moment, we taste something sacred: the memory of a place, and the echo of its song.