{TWD} Cardamom-Scented Arborio Rice Pudding

Spoon foods are big around our house: cereals, soups, and especially puddings. Making cooked puddings, however, has never worked out very satisfactorily for me. Water baths and I are not on particularly good terms, and that is a very common step to many pudding recipes.

So one day about 10 years ago when I spotted some packaged pudding in the dairy case sporting the claim that it was "better than homemade" I didn't hesitate to pick some up. What did I have to lose? It wasn't hard to better my homemade. Anyway, this stuff, Kozy Shack pudding, turned out to be really delicious, far better than anything I'd ever made, and water bath-free. (As an aside, Kozy Shack has lots of great flavors; the tapioca is especially good.) At this point Kozy Shack is the standard by which pudding is judged around here; some might ask "Is it as good as homemade?" but we ask, "Is it as good as Kozy Shack?"

When Isabelle of Les gourmandises d’Isa picked Arborio Rice Pudding, White, Black (Or Both) for this week's TWD recipe, I was game. Since joining the TWD group, I've tackled pie crust, caramel, creme brulee, and even yeast. The best news of all: this is a stovetop recipe, no water baths necessary.

Wikipedia provides this fascinating view of the long history and near-universality of rice pudding:

Rice puddings are found in nearly every area of the world. Recipes can greatly vary even within a single country. The dessert can be boiled or baked. Different types of pudding vary depending on preparation methods and the ingredients selected. The following ingredients are regularly found in rice puddings.

• rice; long or short grain white rice, brown rice, black rice, basmati, or jasmine rice
• milk; (whole milk, coconut milk, cream or evaporated)
• spices; (nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger etc.),
• flavorings; (vanilla, orange, lemon, pistachio, rose water etc.),
• sweetener (sugar, brown sugar, noney, sweetened condensed milk, fruit or syrups)
• eggs

Rice was first cultivated in Asia. Over thousands of years, various pudding recipes have developed in the Eastern Asia. Some include fruit and honey, while others are far simpler consisting of only rice, water and sugar.

...

In Europe, rice pudding with goat's milk was first used by the Romans for medicinal purposes. For this reason, the first written records of rice pudding occur in medical texts. Medieval European sweet boiled rice pudding often was made with almond or cow's milk. Rice pudding appears in 1542 in the then Danish town of Malmo. However, rice was an imported luxury item reserved for the rich. Baked rice puddings featuring elaborate spices and other ingredients appeared in the 17th century. In the 18th century, rice pudding began to replace rye porridge and barley porridge at festivities in Scandinavia. Over centuries, the European recipe has been simplified, resulting in the modern dish often criticized for its blandness.

Although lots of folks might think it bland, I find a simple vanilla rice pudding to be appealing and comforting, in a way that only a cold pudding can be!

cook's notes

-This was another week where reading the P&Q section was an enormous help. For one thing, Dorie herself wrote in (from somewhere in Southeast Asia, no less) to correct a typo in the book's cooking time: the pudding should cook for 55, not 30, minutes.

- Despite this correction, I was a bit nervous about the prospect of milk soup, so I rounded the 1/4 cup of rice (but it was still less than 1/3 cup. I also used a bit less milk - just under 3 cups. I kept the same amount of sugar as the recipe.

- Although the book gives a chocolate option as well as the classic vanilla flavor, I knew I wanted to keep it plain and simple. I figured I’d just add a tiny bit of my new favorite spice: cardamom. Along with a hint of citrus. So while the milk was coming to a boil, I added three green cardamom pods and ½ tsp of lime zest. Before I added the rice, I skimmed out the pods and the zest (which conveniently float). The milk smelled out of this world.

- The pudding thickened slowly. I tried to keep it “bubbling” - not boiling too hard, and not simmering too gently. It looked great at 55 minutes, but by 58 minutes (when I took it off the heat) it was a bit too thick.

- Once the pudding was cooked, I divided out 1/8 and stirred in some chopped bittersweet chocolate – it was easy enough to give myself a taste of Dorie’s “black” variation. {edit: I put 3/4 tsp of vanilla in the rest of the pudding}

- The pudding really cooks down, and I spooned it into three small bowls to refrigerate.

the verdict

The first thing my husband said when he tasted his pudding was, "Is this hard to make?" Already angling for another batch! And then he uttered the fateful words: “It’s better than Cozy Shack.”

I agree that it has fantastic flavor, and the rice was a perfect balance between firm and soft. I wouldn’t mind experimenting with a few other (subtle) flavorings, but my husband loves it exactly this way. I will cook it just a tad shorter next time so that it will be creamier.

Homemade that tastes better than Cozy Shack! Who knew?

You can find the recipe for this delightful confection on pages 412-413 of of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours, or in Isa's post (recipe in French and in English!) You can also hop over to the Tuesdays With Dorie blogroll and click on the blogs of 359 other bakers to see how they cooked up the Arborio pudding.