Rice Pudding

The March issue of Bon Appetit showed up in my mailbox this week . Yay! This is the one magazine these days that I sit and read from cover to cover. One of my favorite bits is the Cooking Life article by Molly Wizenberg, my favorite food writer and author of the award-winning blog Orangette. In the March article, Sweet Memories, Molly writes about her dad's love affair with rice pudding and her own rice pudding coming-of-age, including a simple, definitive recipe.

So, ironically, I discovered this gem of an article when I sat down to dinner with my treasured magazine last night. On the menu? Rice pudding. The kids and I are nursing colds and the husband was out of town, so dinner had to be something simple and comforting that could be made quickly with on-hand ingredients.

Armed with some leftover basmati and the dregs of a carton of whipping cream, I decided to try my hand at making rice pudding for the first time. (Like Molly, I was slow to come to an appreciation of this simple comfort food. Even as an adult, I haven't eaten it often. So, I'm no expert, but I had an idea of what I wanted it to be like. If only I had squeezed in some time to read my Bon Appetit earlier!) After unsuccessfully Googling for recipes, here's what I came up with on my own:

Stir together the following ingredients in a medium-sized, heavy saucepan and bring to a boil:

2 to 2 1/2 cups leftover basmati rice
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 2/3 cups skim milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon

dash of nutmeg
1 heavy pinch kosher salt
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup raisins

Once the mixture boils, reduce the heat to low-medium. In the meantime, beat 1 egg until slightly thickened and lemony in color; set aside. Stir the rice mixture off and on for about 20 minutes, until it takes on more of a loose, creamy, pudding-like consistency. (At this point, I stirred in 2 tablespoons of butter. Probably not completely necessary.)

When that's done, stir about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the hot rice pudding into the beaten egg. Then, slowly add the warmed egg mixture to the rice, stirring vigorously and constantly to prevent the egg from curdling in your pudding. That would be bad.

Continue to gently stir your pudding for about 5 minutes, giving the egg time to cook and finish the thickening process. Note: the egg bit could totally be skipped, if you wanted a little looser consistency.

And then you're done. Slap that creamy goodness into a bowl and indulge. I liked it warm. The kids approved. We'll see this morning how it holds up cold.