Rice Pudding : Fresh and Hot or Tangy Left Overs #cooking #desserts #usingupleftovers #ricepudding

When I make rice pudding its always the old-fashioned baked kind.

Ingredients: Serves 4

• 2 pts milk
• 5 oz short grain rice
• 3 oz sugar
• a knob of butter
• vanilla essence
• ground nutmeg (to taste)

You can vary the amounts of sugar to taste. I prefer to keep sugar to a minimum. Likewise more rice makes a thicker pudding, but don’t go mad – a little goes a long way! My mother often used  half evaporated milk and half whole milk, a habit picked up from cooking during the war years with rationing in the mix, but I find that can be a little sweet.

Method:
Some people say you should heat the milk but I never bother. Just bung it all in and bake it.

• Put milk, rice, sugar and butter into a dish.
• sprinkle with nutmeg
• bake in a low oven (gas mark 2) for 2 hours or you can raise the temp to gas mark 5 for a quicker cook.
• The idea is to get a dark, golden skin on the top and thick rice pudding beneath

Now this makes a large pudding and far too much for myself and Peter at one sitting. But when its been in the fridge overnight it can get a little dried out, at very least it can be cut in slices rather than spooned from the dish. Not as good as when eaten hot from the oven you might think. But of course nothing should be wasted so here is one way to jazz it up.

• Break the pudding up and spoon into individual dishes
• Spoon a generous dollop of Greek yoghurt onto the top
• Add a desert spoon of lemon curd, and serve!
• You can use jam or fruit puree but the lemon curd gives it a nice tang.