I'd been craving rice pudding for well over a week. While I was still in Virginia, I was tempted everyday by the gallons of raw milk B keeps in his fridge (yay to herdshare!). I thought it would absolutely elevate the familiar rice pudding to unimaginable tastiness. I guess you can say I'm a little obsessed with good dairy. Alas, I had all but one of the ingredients: empty stomach space. I had been doing so much cooking that B and I could barely finish what I cooked and baked. In the face of common sense, I ditched the idea to make rice pudding but still got good use out of the arborio rice with a dinner of Virginia country ham risotto made with broth and milk. Oh it was good.
Even though I'm back in my own kitchen without raw milk, I still cannot get rice pudding out of my mind. When I came across Melissa Clark's tweet on rice pudding a couple of days ago, it was all the convincing I needed to get that rice pudding under way.
Rice pudding is familiar and particularly popular with the nursery school set. In this day and age when most comfort food are given chic makeovers, there are many choices out there beyond the traditional creamy vanilla rendition. I remember visiting Rice To Riches in Manhattan and was totally won over by the concept of serving rice pudding of many flavours in a modern ice-cream parlour-like shop. After consulting a few different recipes in my cookbook library, I was drawn to the Saffron Rice Pudding in The Last Course, one of my favourite dessert cookbooks. Remember those gorgeous maple baked apples?
Arborio rice is slowly simmered to plumpness in milk infused with saffron, cinnamon, vanilla bean, and clementine zest. I had more than a few spoonfuls of the warm pudding right off the stove and it was heavenly. At this stage, it would already be a great dessert but I was not done yet. After an overnight chill, the pudding was lightened and enriched by whipped creme fraiche. This atypical step keeps the pudding from turning gummy and adds a refreshing tanginess. This is one of the reasons Claudia Fleming's recipe initially attracted my attention. I took the liberty to further enhance the flavour with orange flower water and Grand Marnier. The recipe made a few serving suggestions involving pistachios and cherries. Working with what I have readily available in my pantry, I topped each pudding with chopped pistachio and cherries in red wine syrup. This dessert is familiar yet sophisticated with a bit of exotic flair. Love it!
Craving, satisifed.
P.S. Why is the pudding so pale without the characteristic bright yellow hue from saffron? Well, first, it was lightened by the whipped creme fraiche. However, I suspect I bought some very low quality stuff (or worse yet, fake...). Be a smart shopper and learn more about it from this excellent article over at Serious Eats.
