RiceLove Bloghop: Coconut Chai-Spiced Rice Pudding

I love rice. It falls into my very small but thoughtful comfort food list. Rice is a blank slate waiting to be transformed into just about anything and then again it is unique because it can stand strong all on it’s own. There aren’t too many other “blank slate” foods that can boast that kind of ability. A plain bowl of pasta with absolutely nothing on it, a piece of tofu all by itself…doesn’t work for me. But give me a nice bowl of steaming rice, ah.

Okay, so why all this gushing over rice? Well, I’ve joined this group of talented cooks and bakers on Twitter in a #ricelove bloghop. This idea actually started last month with a #cakelove bloghop created by the talented Junia of mis pensamientos, to which I added this recipe.

So the deal is this, for the month of September we each decide on a rice-based recipe and post it by a certain date. I’ll tell you, I almost didn’t make it no thanks to that big wind that hit the east coast this past weekend, you know Hurricane Irene. After I got my power back and tossed everything in my fridge, sigh, I had to find the ingredients I needed for the recipe I wanted to make. Would you believe that I didn’t get everything I needed until last evening! Yup, up bright and early this morning making rice pudding!

Ingredients

3 cups milk, divided
1/4 cup honey
1 tbs coarsely chopped crystalized ginger
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp clove
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 star anise
1 cup well shaken coconut milk
1 cup short grain white rice
toasted pistachios (optional)
flaked coconut (optional)

Instructions
1. Pour 2 1/2 cups of the milk into a large saucepan. Add the honey, crystalized ginger, ground ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, clove, black pepper and star anise, stir. Bring to a simmer for about 5 minutes.
2. Remove the star anise and add the coconut milk and stir to combine well.
3. Add the rice and stir. Bring back up to a simmer and cook stirring frequently to prevent sticking until the rice is very soft and pudding-like, about 1 hour. If the pudding is starting to get too thick and the rice is not quite soft enough after about 40 minutes, add the remaining 1/2 cup milk.
4. Garnish with pistachio nuts and/or flaked coconut if desired.

Note: You can make this a day ahead and reheat. You may need to add more milk to get the right consistency.

Just a note, many of the other #ricelove bloggers are placing the “linkything” on their blogs with links back to each other. Unfortunately for me, because I am not self-hosted (yet) I can’t do that. So what I’ve decided to do is provide standard links back to each of the co-hosting blogger’s sites so that you can still hop around the #ricelove fun.

Please join in on the #ricelove fun by linking up any rice recipe from the month of September. Don’t forget to link back to this post, so that your readers know to come stop by the #ricelove event. The twitter hashtag is #ricelove .

Co-Hosted by:
Baker Street: Anuradha
Bloc de Recetas: Salome
Bon a Croquer: Valerie
Cafe Terra: Terra
Chef Pandita: Yuri
Daily Palette: Annapet
Elephant Eats: Amy
Food Wanderings: Shulie
Hobby and More: Richa
Knitstamatic: Deb – That would be me!
Mike’s Baking: Mike
Mis Pensamientos: Junia
Simply Reem: Reem
The Professional Palate: Regan
The Queen’s Notebook: Elizabeth
The Spicy Rd: EA

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