Faced with a 3-pound bag of short-grained rice, a few half gallons of milk, 2 quarts of heavy cream and lots of leftover candied citrus peel, I got back in the rice pudding game.

I admit I was a little stove-shy after last week’s rice dessert debacle (see previous blog post). But I couldn’t possibly use all the milk I bought for the Dessert Buffet for 400 by its expiration date – tomorrow.

First things first. I got rid of Emeril Lagasse’s rice pudding recipe that I used last week. It was delicious, but it had bad juju. So, I hunted around on epicurious.com and came up with a recipe I could tweak.

The differences were slight – I used a split vanilla bean instead of extract; substituted in some heavy cream; and added chopped up candied lemon and orange peel I had made to top my Bavarian Cream-filled tarts.

We had a small dish of my Good Karma Rice Pudding for dessert tonight. As Larry David would say, it was “pret-tay, pre-tay good.” OK, maybe a little better than that because I doubt any of the pudding will make it to the compost pile this time!

GOOD KARMA RICE PUDDING

3 c. whole milk

½ c. short-grain rice

¼ t. salt

1 vanilla bean, split horizontally

4 to 6 pieces of lemon or orange peel, chopped

½ c. milk or heavy cream

3 eggs

½ c. sugar

¼ t. cinnamon

¼ c. raisins, optional

Bring milk, rice, salt, vanilla bean and chopped citrus peel to simmer in a heavy medium to large saucepan. Reduce heat to low. Cover and gently simmer for an hour (or less!) until rice is very tender and liquid is almost absorbed. Stir occasionally.

Remove vanilla bean, scraping the inside of the bean into the pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk milk or cream, eggs, sugar and cinnamon. Stir in raisins if using.

Using a heatproof measuring cup, carefully and slowly add 1 cup of the hot milk/rice mixture to the milk/egg mixture, whisking constantly. (This is called ‘tempering the eggs.’)

Pour the contents of the bowl into the saucepan, whisking or stirring as you do.

Stir over low heat over low heat until mixture thickens. About 6 to 10 minutes.  Pour into a 9×13 glass dish and cool to room temperature. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. To serve, you can sift a little more cinnamon over the dish or top with whipped cream.

Serves 6.

© The Foodsmith, www.lauraraposa.com, 2013

 

Tags: #badjuju, #emeril, #goodkarma, #LauraRaposa, #pudding, #rice, #ricepudding, Dessert