Equal Parts Nostalgia and Obsession

In case anyone was curious about the delay since the last post, it wasn’t due to a crazy gazpacho-fueled lost-weekend bender. The unfortunately long gap is thanks to issues with the digital camera, which have now been resolved, so I should be back on track. That said, I’m taking next week off for an out-of-town event, and Sunday baking will be on hold until the following weekend.

But I’m here now, so let’s explain this violently red-and-white concoction, shall we?

I’ve mentioned before that I cannot pass up sour cherries when they show up for approximately three nanoseconds this time of year, no matter how insane the price. You don’t even want to know how loudly I squealed “Cherries!” when I saw one solitary quart at the mid-week farmers market, nor how much I paid for said quart, nor the elaborate protective structure I rigged up to get it home on the commuter train without squishing a single priceless cherry. Suffice it to say I put it in enough effort to give me every incentive to come up with a really special application for them.

I originally thought about making a pie, but since it’s also a bazillion degrees of late (see previous gazpacho post), I really didn’t want to use the oven if I didn’t have to. Then I opened the fridge and saw I had an open half-gallon of milk to use up and a good amount of basmati rice left over from dinner earlier in the week, and remembered that I’ve been meaning for a while to do a simple rice pudding in tribute to my grandmother. From there it was a short mental leap to the idea of layering the pudding in glasses with a sour cherry compote.

I’m fairly sure I’ve noted that Grandma was not a baker and she only had a handful of recipes in her repertoire. That’s not to say she didn’t have a sweet tooth. She loved desserts, and was the biggest ice cream fiend you’ve ever seen. Coming from a city with a bakery on practically every corner, though, she was used to buying desserts instead of making them, so the only ones I ever remember her making during her annual visits were fruit salads in the summer, and rice pudding in the winter. She never got sick of either, nor did I.

Grandma did not use leftover rice for her pudding, but that was probably only because she didn’t make a big batch of rice at least once a week the way we do. Anyway, what made her rice pudding hers wasn’t the rice, but the generous splash of heavy cream that got stirred in after the rice and milk and sugar had reduced down. Grandma was a huge fan of butterfat way before it got trendy, and saw absolutely nothing wrong with gilding the lily. The half-cup I use here is in fact a dialing-down of her approach, which would have been to pour in the whole pint container’s worth. You can leave out the cream in the recipe below if you like, and you’d still have a perfectly servicable pudding, but it wouldn’t be Grandma’s.

Grandma never served her rice pudding with a fruit compote that I can recall, but she did love cherries, especially cherries mixed with booze, so I think she’d approve of this addition too. If she’d made this, she probably would have given us grandkids the job of pitting the cherries. I’m not going to sugar-coat the fact that it’s a pain in the ass to pit all these cherries, and splatter is inevitable so your counter and whatever top you’re wearing are going to end up looking like a crime scene. I think it’s worth it, though, especially if you can pull up a favorite relative and have a nice chat while you’re making the mess.

Even without the cherries, this rice pudding is a fantastic blank canvas for experimenting with flavors. You can use coconut milk and tangerine peel for a more Asian twist or a cinnamon stick and a bit of brown sugar for a more Mexican feel. You can serve it with anything from ripe mangoes to stewed apples, and you can even sprinkle with sugar and pull out the torch for a crispy bruleed-sugar top.

One of my favorite things to do is flavor with orange zest and stir in some softly-whipped meringue after it cools to room temperature, which sounds bizarre but gives you a cloud-light, glamorous dessert that’s about ten steps above ordinary pudding.  The only thing I personally don’t hold with at all is raisins, but if that’s your thing, you do what you have to do.

Rice Pudding with Sour Cherry Compote
(Compote adapted from Sally Schneider’s A New Way to Cook)
Serves 4-6

For the rice pudding:
4 cups cooked rice
6 cups milk
2/3 cup granulated sugar
Half a vanilla bean, split
1/2 cup heavy cream

For the sour cherry compote:
1 quart sour cherries, pitted
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup amaretto

In a large saucepan, combine the rice, milk, sugar and vanilla bean and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered until the milk has reduced and thickened and the rice has softened to your liking, approximately half an hour. Remove from the heat, pull out the vanilla bean, and stir in the cream. Let cool while preparing the compote.

Place the cherries, sugar and amaretto in a medium pan. Cook over medium heat until the cherries have softened and released their juice, 5 minutes or so. Continue cooking until the liquid is syrupy, 5-10 more minutes. Cool to room temperature.

To serve, layer the rice pudding and cherry compote in alternating layers in small glasses. If desired, whip additional cream and offer it on the side.

Notes:

How tender the rice pudding is will depend on which rice you use. Basmati rice is never going to get completely soft, while a medium-grain rice will break down much more and go really creamy. You can also use cracked rice for an even softer texture. My favorite rice for pudding is probably jasmine, which splits the difference and also adds a little bit of fragrance, but use whatever you have and like.

Temperature also makes a difference. If you serve the pudding straight from the fridge, the starches in the rice will have seized up from the cold and made the grains harder, so I think it’s best to reheat to at least room temperature before serving.

If you don’t want to use amaretto in the cherries, you can just use the same amount of water instead. Cherries do really like almonds, though, and I think that tiny hint of nuttiness really adds something to the end product. Either way, don’t discard any of the liquid left over after you’ve scooped the cherries onto the pudding.  This screaming red, intensely cherry syrup makes a fabulous soda when mixed with a fizzy water, and you can also use it to cherry-ize your cola.

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The Harbinger of Spring

After pie, the dessert His Lordship most often requests is pavlova. And, because I adore meringue in all its forms, from cookie to pie topping, the only time I say no is when the weather is so rainy or humid that working with egg whites is a recipe for failure.

Since yesterday was gorgeously sunny and mild, I readily agreed when he made the request yesterday during the weekly grocery run. My agreement was bolstered by the fact that we were in the produce section and I had spotted rhubarb, which finally convinced me that this ungodly winter is finally behind us. As we’ve established, I love all kinds of tart red fruit, but I have a special soft spot for rhubarb (technically not a fruit, but if it quacks like a duck…) because, like asparagus, it’s the earliest spring produce, bringing with it promises of berries, tomatoes, corn and peaches to come.

If you’ve never had one before, I suppose you could describe pavlova as the ultimate meringue. Unlike the cookie, pavlovas are not crisp all the way through, just on the outside. Underneath a thin, crackly exterior, the inside stays melting and soft, like a flourless angel food cake or the most delicate marshmallow. This already-lovely meringue base is then topped with whipped cream and whichever fresh fruit you fancy. It’s usually made as one giant cake-like disk that is served in wedges, but unless I’m making it for a big crowd of dinner guests, I prefer to make individual-sized ones.

These mini-pavlovas were topped with a compote of rhubarb stewed with a bit of orange peel and spiked with Triple Sec, then mixed with uncooked blackberries and strawberries. The berries were obviously not local, but after all those months of cold and snow and misery, I just really needed them. If you’re more virtuous than I am, you can just hang on to this recipe until they start coming up where you are.

Rhubarb-Berry Pavlovas
(Adapted from Mini-Pavlovas in Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess and Stewed Rhubarb in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone)
Makes 9 individual-sized pavlovas

For the meringues:

4 large egg whites
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon white wine or cider vinegar

For the fruit:

3/4 pound rhubarb, sliced in 1-inch pieces
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon dried orange peel or zest of one fresh orange
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons Triple Sec or other orange liqueur
1 pint each strawberries and blackberries

For the cream:

1 pint heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with parchment.

In a scrupulously clean mixer bowl and with an equally spotless whisk attachment, beat the egg whites and the pinch of salt until firm, but not stiff, peaks form. Continue beating, gradually adding the sugar by the spoonful, until you achieve a satiny meringue. Gently fold in the cornstarch, vanilla and vinegar until just combined.

Using an ice cream scoop or two large spoons, drop the meringue into nine equal mounds on the sheet. Use a spoon to smooth the mounds into round, flat-topped disks around four inches in diameter.

Put the meringues in the oven and immediately lower the heat to 300 F. Bake for 30 minutes, until they’re crisping on the outside but otherwise still pale and marshmallowy. Turn the oven off and leave them for another 30 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool.

While the meringues are baking and cooling, combine the rhubarb, 1/3 cup sugar, orange peel and water in a medium saucepan and simmer until the rhubarb is tender but still intact, approximately 10 minutes. When the rhubarb has cooled to room temperature, hull and quarter the strawberries and stir into the rhubarb with the Triple Sec and blackberries.

In a mixer or by hand with a whisk, beat the cream with the sugar until softly whipped.

To assemble the pavlovas, flip a meringue belly-up onto a plate, and dollop with the cream.  Top with the rhubarb compote and berries.  Serve immediately.

Notes:

Since pavlovas are so popular around here, I generally make enough of these mini ones to eat over the course of two or three days. Once baked, the meringues will keep quite well in an airtight container for that long, and if they do get soft, you can crisp them back up for about 30 minutes in an oven preheated to 300 F and then turned off.

If that’s still too much meringuey goodness for your needs, the recipe can easily be halved to make 4-5 individual pavlovas.

The color on my meringues is a sign that I am long overdue for getting a new oven thermometer. Like meringue cookies, pavlovas should really be snowy white, in homage to the tulle costumes of ballerina Anna Pavlova, for whom the dessert was invented. My oven is having issues in the mid range, because I’m finding it a little too slow from 350 and up, and now it’s clearly too high from 325 down. The browning doesn’t affect the taste, but it does throw the aesthetics off, at least until you pile the cream over it.

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There is Never Room for JELL-O

Pace Bill Cosby, there is no excuse for using a boxed mix to make chocolate pudding. No, there isn’t. Seriously.

I don’t care how frazzled and spaced-out you are. The homemade stuff takes almost no time or coherent thought and can be made even when your pantry is next to bare. I made this in twenty minutes at 10:00 at night because the overpriced Marjolaine cake I bought from a patisserie in our most yuppified neighborhood was an utter disappointment. The layers were as dense as polyurethane foam, the ganache was spackle-esque, the mousse was gummy, and the whole thing had such a terminal flavor deficit that I actually left half of it in the beribboned box. Disgruntled and still needing chocolate, I whipped up this pudding and staved off a theobromine-deprived tantrum.

The beauty of this pudding recipe is that it’s versatile on top of being stupidly easy. You can create flavor variations with spices, extracts, or liqueurs. You can play around with the dairy component, using soy or rice milk to make it vegan, or coconut milk for a tropical undertone. You can use every gradient of chocolate, from milk to ultra-super-mega-dark, according to your preference.

Although you must use the good stuff.

You can leave it after-school plain or go elegant by folding it into whipped cream for an instant mousse. You can challenge your guests with chiles or flirt with twee by adding coffee or black tea and spooning it into demitasse cups with a spoon-shaped cookie on the side.

For those who would protest that they need the mix to make Great-Aunt Rosalie’s Chocolate Fluff Pie or whatever, I still say no. You should use this and a pint of whipped real cream instead of a box full of powdered wrong and a tub of hydrogenated trans-fats. Trust me, your taste buds, your arteries, and even Rosalie’s spirit will thank you.

If this is still just too much work for you, you might as well buy the premade stuff that comes in tubs, allegedly from a “shack” of some kind, because you’ve already abandoned all standards and let yourself go. I’m just saying.

No Excuses Chocolate Pudding
(Adapted from Bionic Chocolate Pudding in Didi Emmon’s Entertaining for a Vegetarian Planet)
Serves 4

1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-processed
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
Pinch of sea salt
1 1/2 cups milk, preferably whole but lowfat will work fine
2 ounces high-quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 teaspoons Amaretto or 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/3 cup heavy cream, whipped with 1 tablespoon sugar
3-4 amaretti cookies, crushed

Whisk together the sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch and salt in a medium bowl. Stir in 1/4 cup of milk, continuing to whisk until smooth.

Bring the remainder of the milk to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Pour about a third of the hot milk into the cocoa, whisking briskly to distribute, then stir in the rest of the milk. Return the mixture to the pan and bring back up to a boil, stirring frequently. Continuing cooking for several more minutes, still stirring, until the pudding thickens.

Remove from the heat and add the chocolate and Amaretto or vanilla, stirring until the chocolate has melted. Pour the pudding into a shallow bowl or into individual glasses. Cover with plastic wrap, pushing the wrap down to the surface to prevent a skin from forming (unless you like that sort of thing), and refrigerate until cool.

When ready to serve, top with whipped cream and the crushed cookie dust.

Notes:

The cooling step is not absolutely mandatory. If it’s a chocolate emergency, you can let it sit in a shallow dish for about ten minutes, just to get it down to room temperature. You could also put it in the freezer, either just to cool it enough to eat or as a deliberate choice. Frozen chocolate pudding has the consistency of a fudgesicle, which is no bad thing, I can assure you.

Small edit to add a bit of advice for vegans: Since non-dairy milks can be a little more sensitive and prone to curdling at higher temperatures, you may want to be conservative and only bring the soy, almond, or rice milk just up to scalding, but not a boil, before adding it to the cocoa mixture.  Once you mix the milk with the cornstarch, the starch should stabilize it and you should be fine to proceed as directed.

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