FORBIDDEN RICE PUDDING WITH ORANGE BLOSSOM WATER AND KUMQUATS

When you cook for people on a quasi-regular basis, you can start to feel like a DJ at a Bar Mitzvah, meaning, you take lots of requests, sometimes of things that aren't really your style. Not that I have strong negative feelings against rice pudding, it just never appealed to me above other options. Chocolate would always win out over rice-pudding. But my boyfriend is a rice-pudding monger, and has been passive-aggressively hinting at it for a while. And when I got some forbidden rice to serve with chili, the wheels in my head started turning. Forbidden rice has a flavor all its own. Toasty and nutty, how one imagines grains should taste. If I were to have rice pudding, this would be the rice I'd want. So there I was, stirring a pot for 45 minutes, and what resulted was, well, Peter said I could use it to caulk the tiles on my floor. Not a complete success. Second time around, it was a different story. Creamy, thick, and nutty, with orange blossom water adding a lightly floral and musky depth, and kumquats bringing tart acidity and freshness to cut through the creamy sweetness. Needless to say, my opinions about rice pudding have shifted, and I just might order it over chocolate next time around. Enjoy! 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup forbidden rice (aka black rice)

1 1/2 cups water

2 pinches of salt

1/2 cup white sugar

2 cups heavy cream

2 cups milk (I use non fat or 2%)

1 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract

2 teaspoons orange blossom water

2 kumquats, thinly sliced  

Directions:

In a wide sauce pan (but at least 3 inches deep) combine the rice, water, and salt over medium-high heat until it simmers at the edges.  Turn the heat down to medium, cover it, and cook for 10 minutes. Then remove the cover, and allow it to cook for another 5 to 10 minutes, until the water is absorbed into the rice (meaning, there is none or extremely little left in the pan).  Add the milk, cream, orange blossom water, vanilla, and sugar.  Cook over Medium-Medium Low heat, stirring regularly, for 40-45 minutes, or until the cream mixture is thickened (but not thick like pudding...if you cook it until it looks like rice-pudding, when the pudding cools it will become the "caulk" me boyfriend teased me about) and the rice is tender but not mushy (I actually like mine with a little bit of texture).  Don't worry about the skin that forms on top of the pudding, just keep stirring and it will dissolve straight back into it.

Pour the mixture into a container (or individual serving cups) and press a sheet of plastic wrap into the surface of the rice pudding (this is to prevent a skin forming).  Allow the rice pudding to cool in the fridge for a couple hours to set.  

To serve, thinly slice some kumquats for garnish. Enjoy!