It’s funny how things can turn out to be an unexpected success. An old friend was visiting last weekend, so I made this an excuse to send the other half into Crouch End for a really decent piece of pork for dinner. It’s just as well I said get a large loin, as by the time we sat down to eat the party had gone from three to six diners. Luckily I’m never knowingly under-catered, and with the addition of a first course of some Serrano ham, olives and hummus, I got away with it.
Luckily, too, I had planned a pudding that would easily stretch - rice pudding and stewed fruit. The pudding rice has been knocking around the cupboard for months and I decided it needed using up. Since a ridiculously small amount of rice makes enough pudding for three to four people, it wasn’t really testing my resources to make a second pudding. You just get a nice pudding bowl or small casserole or other oven proof dish. Into it, you weigh 60g pudding rice. The you add about a pint of milk, a few tablespoons of sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla essence. Add a big knob of butter and put in a low oven - about 150 degrees centigrade. After an hour, stir the butter into the milky rice. Leave for a further 1-2 hours. By this time a rich brown crust will have formed on top, which you either love or hate - if you hate it, you can just dig out creamy rice from underneath and leave it for you grateful friends who do like the skin on rice pudding. Should you need to, you can make it early in the day or probably even further ahead than that and then reheat in a low oven.
For five people (one guest is a non dairy person) I made two puddings, which should have served 6-8. We managed to eat the lot - they fell on it like they were starving, despite having already disposed of the snacky starter and all of the pork along with greens and baked potatoes. No one seems to make these old school puddings any more, which is a shame as they are so easy. To posh things up a bit, I did some poached apples along side - dessert apples cut into wedges but not peeled, which helped them to keep their shape and also turned the juice a lovely rose pink. Once I’d cooked them through in water and sugar and a cinnamon stick, I lifted out the apples and reduced the juices a bit so it was more like a syrup. I then added a slug of bourbon and poured the juice back over the apples. It was handy I’d planned on doing the apples otherwise the no-dairy friend would have got no pudding at all. And the leftovers were jolly nice for breakfast this morning with American style pancakes and a splodge of Greek yoghurt.
