Rice Pudding. It was the ultimate comfort food in my family growing up. Mom would make extra rice for supper, then take the leftover rice, add milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and if I was lucky and she wasn't (Mom's a little crazy, she doesn't like raisins) she'd add raisins and she'd whip up a batch on the stove. Sometimes for special occasions, she'd make it for breakfast (Like Bill Cosby said, "That's nutrition!").
I'd go over to my Grandma's house (Sorry, no wolves in this story) and she would make up a batch of rice pudding in the oven. It really ought to be called rice custard because it was made with whole milk and eggs and it ended up a thick, jell-oey custard with rice buried on the bottom and spices on top. When she died, she took it with her. I dug through her cookbooks and found one recipe that didn't work quite right and had out-of-date instructions like 'stoke the oven to a medium flame'. What the heck is a medium flame in degrees Fahrenheit? 325? 350? Obviously it was one of those she memorized and made it without looking. It took me years to re-create the recipe and even then I'm not sure I got it quite right.
Years later, I read a great book called The Novel by James A. Michener. It's still my favorite Michener book. The book opens as the wife of the central character Lukas Yoder makes her German rice pudding. Michener describes it in such mouth-watering detail that you swear you could actually smell it cooking.
Emma drew out a handsome German cooking bowl of heavy brown ware, fourteen inches across and six inches high, flared at the top, so the sides were not perpendicular. In it she had prepared one of the glories of Dutch cooking, golden brown on top, speckled with raisins beneath the crustlike surface.
An Emma Yoder rice pudding was not one of those characterless affairs made with rice already boiled and a milky-thin custard with no raisins but maybe a little bit of cinnamon on top. For her no boiling but baking only, and that took time, plus careful attention as the pudding neared completion. That was why the container in which she baked it had to be much deeper that one might have expected, for after the hard grains of rice had cooked slowly for several hours until soft, and the raisins had been thrown in, and then the cinnamon, real cooking began, and at ten or fifteen minute intervals a beautiful brown crust would cover the top, the color coming from the caramelized sugar in the mix. Then, with a long-handles spoon she would stir the forming crust back into the pudding, so that in time this tasty amber richness was mixed visibly throughout the entire pudding.
The art of making a true German rice pudding lies in starting with the right proportions of uncooked rice and rich milk; at the beginning it looks very watery, but as it bakes and the excess liquid vanishes in steam, the milk, eggs, and sugar combine magically into one of the choicest custards of all cuisines. But what makes German pudding so wondrous to the taste is the intermixing of the caramelized crust and the raisins into the custard. A union like that does not happen accidentally.
I made many attempts over the years to recreate my Grandma Sally's rice custard and then by logical extension, as it sounded so similar to what my Grandma had lovingly made me, Emma Yoder's German pudding. I'm afraid after all these years that Jim Michener used a little literary license and fudged the recipe. The thing about custard, is that when you stir it, it curdles. Instead of a ultra-smooth Crème brûlée consistency, you have rice and raisins, surrounded by a curdled cream filling. Delicious, but not the ambrosia detailed above.
Then one day in the grocery store I stumbled across an orange 500mL container of Kozy Shack rice pudding. It was so incredibly creamy! So delicious! And it was better than Grandma's! Gasp! Say it ain't so! It added to the sheer despair of creating the world's greatest rice pudding. It was like when that older brother or cousin informed you with such hidden glee that Santa wasn't real, or when the so-called friend in grade eight led you on about the girl he knew you liked and discovering that he had made it all up. What terrible siren song. The world just didn't seem right anymore. I still occasionally fall prey to my taste buds while shopping and grab a tub, but I keep telling myself that if they can do it, I can do it.
So to try and better my previous experiments, I've been experimenting with Italian rice instead of Asian rices such as Jasmine or Basmati. There are several varieties such as Carnoroli, Arborio or Vialone Nano. The Italian rices have been bred to retain its shape and yet create a creamy texture due to the higher starch content. Like in risotto, the rice adds to the thickness of the end product. I settled on Arborio as I haven't been able to find any others readily available in Edmonton. I would like to try Vialone Nano as it tends to absorb the flavors of the other ingredients better and cooks faster. The last attempt several months ago was a dismal failure as the recipe I tried didn't have enough liquid in the recipe to compensate for the Arborio rice. Part way through it was obvious that I needed more liquid and I kept adding milk, but the end product was chewy and tough and easily the worst rice pudding I have ever made, perhaps the worst I've ever tasted. I did some more research, and sure enough, the recipes I found backed this up and they required almost 3 times as much liquid as the attempted recipe I'd tried.
This weekend, I attempted my latest shot at recreating the ambrosia of my youth:
Arborio Rice Pudding
8 cups whole milk (I used whole goat's milk as I have an intolerance for cow's milk)
1 cup Arborio rice
1/2 cup white sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and the vanilla grains scraped out
1 Tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
or try 1/2 cup dried cranberries instead
or even some fresh raspberries (added upon serving) for something different
In a large saucepan (use one with a heavy-duty bottom to keep from scorching), place all the ingredients, except the raspberries if you are doing that. Bring it to a gentle boil and then turn it down to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking to the bottom, for about 45 minutes. At this point, the pudding should be noticeably thicker and the rice should be very soft and plump.
Take the pudding off the heat. Pour into dessert bowls and stir in some fresh raspberries, or fresh fruit. Serve immediately. It can be chilled, which will further thicken it and served cold as well.
The end result was very smooth, very tasty. Very encouraging. But I think I would like to try the baked custard version again using the Arborio rice or even Vialone Nano if I can find some.
Years later, I read a great book called The Novel by James A. Michener. It's still my favorite Michener book. The book opens as the wife of the central character Lukas Yoder makes her German rice pudding. Michener describes it in such mouth-watering detail that you swear you could actually smell it cooking.
Emma drew out a handsome German cooking bowl of heavy brown ware, fourteen inches across and six inches high, flared at the top, so the sides were not perpendicular. In it she had prepared one of the glories of Dutch cooking, golden brown on top, speckled with raisins beneath the crustlike surface.
An Emma Yoder rice pudding was not one of those characterless affairs made with rice already boiled and a milky-thin custard with no raisins but maybe a little bit of cinnamon on top. For her no boiling but baking only, and that took time, plus careful attention as the pudding neared completion. That was why the container in which she baked it had to be much deeper that one might have expected, for after the hard grains of rice had cooked slowly for several hours until soft, and the raisins had been thrown in, and then the cinnamon, real cooking began, and at ten or fifteen minute intervals a beautiful brown crust would cover the top, the color coming from the caramelized sugar in the mix. Then, with a long-handles spoon she would stir the forming crust back into the pudding, so that in time this tasty amber richness was mixed visibly throughout the entire pudding.
The art of making a true German rice pudding lies in starting with the right proportions of uncooked rice and rich milk; at the beginning it looks very watery, but as it bakes and the excess liquid vanishes in steam, the milk, eggs, and sugar combine magically into one of the choicest custards of all cuisines. But what makes German pudding so wondrous to the taste is the intermixing of the caramelized crust and the raisins into the custard. A union like that does not happen accidentally.
I made many attempts over the years to recreate my Grandma Sally's rice custard and then by logical extension, as it sounded so similar to what my Grandma had lovingly made me, Emma Yoder's German pudding. I'm afraid after all these years that Jim Michener used a little literary license and fudged the recipe. The thing about custard, is that when you stir it, it curdles. Instead of a ultra-smooth Crème brûlée consistency, you have rice and raisins, surrounded by a curdled cream filling. Delicious, but not the ambrosia detailed above.
Then one day in the grocery store I stumbled across an orange 500mL container of Kozy Shack rice pudding. It was so incredibly creamy! So delicious! And it was better than Grandma's! Gasp! Say it ain't so! It added to the sheer despair of creating the world's greatest rice pudding. It was like when that older brother or cousin informed you with such hidden glee that Santa wasn't real, or when the so-called friend in grade eight led you on about the girl he knew you liked and discovering that he had made it all up. What terrible siren song. The world just didn't seem right anymore. I still occasionally fall prey to my taste buds while shopping and grab a tub, but I keep telling myself that if they can do it, I can do it.
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| Scraping the grains or caviar of the vanilla bean |
This weekend, I attempted my latest shot at recreating the ambrosia of my youth:
Arborio Rice Pudding
8 cups whole milk (I used whole goat's milk as I have an intolerance for cow's milk)
1 cup Arborio rice
1/2 cup white sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and the vanilla grains scraped out
1 Tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
or try 1/2 cup dried cranberries instead
or even some fresh raspberries (added upon serving) for something different
In a large saucepan (use one with a heavy-duty bottom to keep from scorching), place all the ingredients, except the raspberries if you are doing that. Bring it to a gentle boil and then turn it down to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking to the bottom, for about 45 minutes. At this point, the pudding should be noticeably thicker and the rice should be very soft and plump.
Take the pudding off the heat. Pour into dessert bowls and stir in some fresh raspberries, or fresh fruit. Serve immediately. It can be chilled, which will further thicken it and served cold as well.
The end result was very smooth, very tasty. Very encouraging. But I think I would like to try the baked custard version again using the Arborio rice or even Vialone Nano if I can find some.
Oh, Man! I've been looking for a good rice pudding recipe for years!!! This must be wonderful - I gained five pounds just reading about it . . .
ReplyDeleteWait, it gets better. I've made better rice pudding than this, but I think the Arborio (Vialone Nano might be a better choice if I can find it) is the key to the creaminess I'm looking for, but the taste of this recipe isn't as good as my custard one. So that's coming next.
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