Molly's baked rice pudding

Tamara West

The creaminess and the lovely thick golden brown skin are two things I will always remember about my Grandma Molly’s rice pudding that was always made in a huge thick, dark brown, almost black pudding bowl whenever we visited for a special weekend meal. Unfortunately I never managed to get her recipe or ask her about her pudding secrets, but my goal has been to try to recreate her perfect rice pudding. Here’s my recipe in honour of her.

Rice pudding

100 g	Short grain rice, sushi or aborio (Main)
4 Tbsp	Sugar
4 ½ cups	Milk (Main)
1	Lemon, use 2 strips of peel
1	Orange, use 2 strips of peel
1	Whole nutmeg, to grate over
1 Tbsp	Butter

Vanilla caramel pears

½	Vanilla pods
150 g	Sugar
75 ml	Water
2	Pears, beurre bosc, peeled and halved, core removed

Directions

Rice pudding

1. Heat oven to 140C.
2. Place rice, sugar, milk, lemon and orange zest into an ovenproof dish. Mix well with a spoon then grate fresh nutmeg over the top. Put the butter in the middle of the pudding — this will melt and help form the golden skin — then place in the oven.
3. For the first hour, carefully stir the pudding at 20-minute intervals to help distribute the rice grains evenly. Bake for 2 hours.
4. Serve hot with vanilla caramel pears (below).

Vanilla caramel pears

1. Split the vanilla pod in half and scrape the seeds out, rub the sugar into the seeds and pod. Place the sugar, vanilla pod and water in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil then turn down to a simmer and cook to a golden caramel.
2. Remove from the heat, carefully pour in an additional 100ml of water. Return to the heat and stir to form a smooth sauce.
3. Add the pears and simmer for 15 minutes then turn over and cook for a further 15 minutes.