HOWEVER, I don't, and it's ages since I've eaten rice pudding, and the only rice pudding I've even seen recently has been the tinned stuff in the supermarket (or as I prefer to call it, the Evil Empire).
So I thought I would give this recipe for Torta di Riso a go. The name just means 'rice cake' but it's only pretending to be a cake - it's a fair dinkum rice pudding with a bit of egg in it that allows it to be moulded and stand up prettily instead of slopping around.
I found the recipe in a book by a New Zealand author, Julie Le Clerc, called Little Cafe Cakes. The book is ten years old now but I got it only recently (thanks, downsizing Mum).
I'll give the credit to Julie, but I'm pretty sure this is a stock standard recipe with the possible exception of the lemon flavour. The interwebs tells me that torta di riso is a traditional sweet that originated in Torano, Bedizzano and Mirteto, small villages in the Massa Carrara province of Italy - it's described simply as a cake made from milk and rice.
Torta di Riso recipe
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup arborio rice (risotto rice)
3 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup castor sugar
zest and juice of one lemon
ground almonds (for dusting cake tins)
Preheat oven to 160C. Grease the cake pans, muffin trays or whatever you'd like to use, and dust them with ground almonds. (To be sure of a good unmoulding, cut some baking paper circles and line the bottom of each mould with them - it seems like extra work but you'll thank me for the tip).
Warm the milk in a saucepan, making sure it doesn't boil over. In another, heavy-based saucepan, heat the olive oil and add the rice, stirring for a few minutes until well coated.
Add the hot milk to the rice and simmer over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent it from sticking, until the rice is tender and the milk has been absorbed. This will take about 20 minutes.
As you can see in this pic, the texture thickens just like a risotto - in fact, at this stage it is a risotto - just made with milk instead of stock. And just like a risotto, as the texture thickens you need to check whether the rice is cooked through.
When you have a thick texture like this, try a few grains of rice. If they're still chewy, add a bit more milk and cook until it's absorbed.
At this stage take it off the heat and cool it down. I wanted to do this quickly so I spread it on a plate and put it in the freezer for ten minutes.
Zest the lemon, then slice it and juice it (here is a fairly unnecessary pic of a lemon being zested). Chop the zest finely.
Beat the eggs with the sugar in a mixing bowl, with an electric beater, until they are thick and pale and hold the ribbon. Then gently fold the cooled rice, the zest and the lemon juice into the egg mixture.
When it's well combined, spoon it into the prepared pans and bake for 15 minutes. I used some French friand tins that look very cute but are absolutely vicious because they have such sharp edges that I have cut myself a few times when washing them out. Those Frenchies!!
It should be slightly browned and springy to the touch when cooked.
It should be slightly browned and springy to the touch when cooked.
Cool before removing from the tins. Run a sharp knife around the edges of the tins before upending them onto a plate or rack. Peel the baking paper carefully off the top.
I thought these looked a bit plain so I fancied them up a bit. I used a smidge of glace icing (just icing sugar and lemon juice in this case) to spread a little circle on the tops of the puddings, and then heaped some longer pieces of lemon zest on top.
I had dredged these lemon zest pieces in beaten egg white, then castor sugar, to try to candy them - this would have worked beautifully if I'd done them eight hours earlier and dried them properly, but by using them straightaway they never crisped up - oh well. FA NIENTE. (doesn't matter).
Spero che queste ti piace moltissimo!
(Hope you like 'em!)
