Rather Rich Rice Pudding

Rice pudding is not the most photogenic of foods.

Unlike seemingly every member of my family, I’ve never been a devotee of rice pudding. I recall being disappointed several times as a child when I discovered that a pot of steaming whiteness being stirred on stove was not the pleasantly bubble-like tapioca, but rather its backcountry cousin, rice pudding. However, as I’ve matured, I’ve grown more interested the humbler foods that I once shunned. My recent interest in rice-pudding based desserts was initially piqued by a recipe I came across a few Christmases ago in America's Best Lost Recipes, published by Cook’s Country magazine. A recipe entitled ‘Grandpa Boyen's Famous Belgian Rice Custard Pie’, and the little story that accompanied it caught my imagination, reminding me of recipes handed down in my own family. Ignoring my own dislike of rice pudding, I eagerly created it - a pie crust layered with a prune-brandy base, covered in rice pudding and baked.

With the exception of my father, the resulting pie itself was not very popular with my family (it was christened, among other things, ‘maggot pie’). I took some not-so-lovely photos of it, though:

After that incident, I once again abandoned rice desserts for a while, that is, until I stumbled across a recipe for Danish Rice Pudding with Berry Compote. Everything about this recipe, the title, the photo, the description, had me dreaming of its creamy goodness. However, like many recipes I dream about cooking, I put it off for a very long time. After a busy Christmas cooking marathon, I’d been perusing cook books and cooking blogs, often coming cross quite a few other Christmas-oriented rice puddings. Around New Year’s, I decided “I am going to make rice pudding!” So that’s what I did.

After pouring over several similar recipes, I settled upon this recipe as a basis for the following recipe. I adapted it slightly to my own tastes and resources - swapping long grain rice with the starchier arborio, replacing some of the cream with milk, and leaving out the butter entirely. Because of the rice change, and my own pudding-thickness-indecision, I ended up cooking the pudding nearly twice as long as recommended in the original recipe. However, I was having a such nice evening in the kitchen, inhaling the beautiful vanilla-scented pudding steam I stirred (and stirred [and stirred]), that I rather lost track of the hours, and I didn’t record my cooking time very well. I managed to listen to the whole of Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis, (about 45 minutes long) and the majority of Mozart’s Requiem Mass (about an hour long)  before I added the egg-cream mixture. By the time I finished the rice pudding, I’d already moved on to Owen Pallett’s Heartland, so I’d estimate the total cooking time at around 2 ½ hours.

Once I was finally tired of stirring and satisfied with the texture, I placed the pudding in a glass container and refrigerated it overnight. When I returned to it the following afternoon, I was delighted to find a rich, custardy pudding awaiting my eager face.

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Rather Rich Rice Pudding

1 cup arborio rice
¾ cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 tsp (or more) vanilla extract
2 quarts (8 cups) milk*
2 eggs
1 cup cream-milk mixture**

In a large pan (over 3qt), mix together rice, sugar, salt, vanilla, and 2 qts. milk. Cooking on medium heat, bring to the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low, and cook the mixture until the rice becomes tender (approximately 1-1.5 hours), continuing to stir very regularly.

In a separate bowl, lightly beat the two eggs with the with cream-milk mixture. Stir one cup of the hot rice mixture into the the egg-cream mixture, and then add the rice-egg-milk mixture to the hot rice mixture, while stirring rapidly.

Continue to cook the pudding on low heat, until it has reached the desired consistency and texture. Spoon into a separate dish and refrigerate for several hours! Unless you enjoy hot pudding...

This pudding tasted lovely on its own, but it also tastes wonderful with standard additions such as:
- spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, etc),
- fruit (fresh, cooked, or dried)
- nuts

* I used whole milk because there was some in the fridge, but I often substitute 1 and 2% in recipes
**I mixed ¼ c. milk with ¾ c. cream, but I think more milk-favoring proportion (or some half and half) would work quite nicely

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