Table for Two by Bre Graham

Author:Bre Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241626078
Publisher: Dorling Kindersley Ltd

Breakfast Buckle Cake

g JUST TO DELIGHT g CONTENTS

Spiced Rice Pudding and Gingery Rhubarb

Most of my favourite comfort foods come from early childhood. They’re the dishes I grew up eating and are so intertwined with my memories of being a kid that I can hardly remember when I first tasted them. That said, one of my ultimate comfort foods, to both eat and cook, comes from my tempestuous teenage years: rice pudding wasn’t a dish that my mum made for us as children, and growing up in Singapore the closest thing I ate was probably congee.

Now, as I write, there is no one in the world that I would rather spend an afternoon eating with than Mum, but during my drama-queen teenage years, I took everything out on her. When I got home from school each day, exhausted from school-yard bullies, homework and the complexities of being a teenager, I just wanted to disappear into an album and go to sleep. It was around this time, Mum started to make me rice pudding; on getting home, I would smell the rice, milk and spices gently simmering on the stove. I think because rice pudding was new to me, it sparked my interest and, wanting to find out how it was made, I’d start to come into the kitchen and stir the pot, while Sydney’s winter rain battered against the kitchen windows. By the time the pudding was poured into little bowls, we’d spent an afternoon talking and we haven’t really stopped since.

In an interview a few years ago, I was asked my top five comfort foods and without skipping a beat the first thing that came to mind was Mum’s rice pudding. This version is spiced with aromatics like cinnamon, cardamom and bay and uses arborio rice, normally reserved for risotto. The spice mix brings a gentle warmth and the arborio adds a smooth, velvety texture to the pudding that pairs so well with the tartness of the roasted rhubarb.

Spiced Rice pudding

170g (scant 1 cup) arborio rice

1 litre (4½ cups) whole milk

1 bay leaf

½ star anise

1 cinnamon stick

1 long strip of unwaxed lemon peel

1 clove

2 cardamom pods, split

a pinch of sea salt

60g (⅓ cup) caster (superfine) sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

100ml (6½ tbsp) single (light) cream

1 tbsp Greek yogurt

Gingery rhubarb

juice of 1 large orange, preferably blood orange

2 tsp caster (superfine) sugar

¼ tsp finely grated fresh root ginger

2 rhubarb stalks, chopped into 5cm long pieces

Into a large, heavy-bottomed pot, add the rice and milk along with the bay leaf, star anise, cinnamon stick, lemon peel, clove, cardamom, salt and sugar. Give everything a good stir and bring to a gentle simmer over a medium heat.

Once simmering, turn the heat down to low and gently stir so the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom. It looks like a lot of milk but trust the process and it will be perfect. Let the pudding simmer on low for 25 minutes, stirring every few minutes, or until each grain is soft but still has a bit of bite.

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