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RICE MILK (a Spanish recipe)
Take a pound of rice, wash it, and put it into a stewpan with cold water; half cook, drain it, and complete the cooking in milk. The rice should be kept on the fire till it is very tender but not in a pulp; at the last moment add sugar to taste. When done enough, place the rice in a deep dish, smooth the surface, and place on the top a buttered paper; cut out in any open or ornamental pattern. Mix cinnamon powder with a little sugar, and sprinkle this over the paper; remove the paper, and the pattern will be found marked with sugar on the surface of the rice.
A plain rice pudding cooked entirely on the stovetop, with a stencilling trick for the finish. The recipe gives no quantity of milk and no timings, so the judgement is all in the texture.
- Rice and yieldA pound of rice is about 2 1/4 cups dry and will feed ten or so. For a household of four, scale down to about a third of the recipe. Use a short or medium grain rice — arroz bomba, Calasparra, arborio or pudding rice — since long grain releases less of the starch that thickens the milk.
- The milk quantity is unstatedReckon on roughly four times the volume of the part-cooked rice in whole milk, added in stages rather than all at once. The rice should always be loose in the liquid; adding milk gradually gives you control over the final consistency.
- The half-boil in waterSimmering the rice in water first, for about half its cooking time, washes out surface starch and stops the milk catching and scorching before the grain has softened. Drain it and get it into the hot milk without letting it sit and stiffen.
- "Tender but not in a pulp"This is the hinge. The grains should be soft through with no chalky centre but still individually distinct in a thickened, pourable milk. It will set noticeably firmer as it cools, so pull it off the heat while it still looks a little loose.
- Sugar at the endSugar added early slows the softening of the grain and increases the risk of scorching. Roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup for the full pound of rice, stirred in off the boil, suits most palates; Spanish versions also take a strip of lemon peel and a cinnamon stick in the milk, both fished out before serving.
- Heat and stirringKeep the milk at a bare tremble, not a boil, and stir often with a flat-ended wooden spoon that reaches the corners of the pan. A heavy-based pan is worth more here than any amount of attention.
- The stencilled paperCut a round of parchment or greaseproof to fit the dish, butter one side, and cut out the pattern with a scalpel or small sharp knife. Lay it buttered-side down on the pudding once the surface has cooled and set slightly, dust cinnamon sugar over it, and lift it straight up. If the surface is still steaming the paper will stick and the edges of the pattern will blur.
- ServingSpanish arroz con leche is usually served cold or barely warm, which also lets the cinnamon pattern hold. Chill uncovered until set, then cover; it will keep three days refrigerated and will need loosening with a splash of milk.
Arroz con leche is one of the standard sweets of the Spanish domestic kitchen, north and south, and the combination of rice, milk, sugar and cinnamon is generally traced to the Moorish presence in the peninsula — rice cultivation in Valencia and the trade in cane sugar both come from that period, though cinnamon reached Europe by several routes and cannot be assigned to it so neatly. Cassell's, compiled in London in the later nineteenth century, gathered continental recipes wholesale and labelled them by nation, and this entry is a fair example: the method is faithful, but the notes are compressed to the point of leaving the cook to guess at the milk. The buttered paper stencil is a piece of period pastry-kitchen practice rather than anything specifically Spanish, and the same trick is often said to have been used in English kitchens for dusting icing sugar patterns over cakes and creams.