freestyle dessert: cherries and sweet rice
Bittman wrote about a rice/bread/noodle pudding recipe this week, and I have these cherries in my freezer that I am desperate to showcase. Plus, I live to horrify Paul with what Jenn and I eat when he is not around, so I decided that tonight would be a two dessert night (this, plus a muy delicious key lime pie that Cronin brought from Florida.)
I am not super keen on the traditional pice pudding, with raisins and cinnamon and too much liquid. I vastly prefer the asian sweet sticky rice. So, I took the rice left over from lunch, and just basically added everything too taste. It roughly ended up being:
2 cups cooked rice
.5-.75 cup milk
5 tablespoons condensed milk
2 tablespoons sugar
.25 teaspoon vanilla
But I started out with enough milk to cover the bottom of the pan, and a tablespoon of condensed milk, and basically tasted along (and cooked off all the liquid, then added more) until I was happy with it.
The cherries were simpler — I looked up a few recipes online, saw one that called for red wine as the liquid, and realized I had red wine in the fridge for months now that would be perfect for the task.
.5 cups red wine
fresh ground black pepper (maybe a quarter teaspoon)
half a cinnamon stick, plus a dash of ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons of sugar (roughly)
Simmered all this until the sugar dissolved, then threw in a cup of frozen sour cherries, and simmered for about 5 minutes. Pulled the cherries out, then reduced the liquid until it was getting syrupy, and poured that on top of the cherries. It’s done!
