Some days are meant to be relaxed and peaceful. And that is when you need some comfort food as well to soothe your body and soul. I have many recipes which fall into my big list of comfort foods. It’s even hard to remember all of them right away. It’s like that my body craves for one of them specifically at the certain point of time, depending on my mood. Rice pudding is one such comfort food, which I like a lot but then only when I am in a mood to have a bowlful. And that happens abruptly. I don’t know if this makes a sense at all or not. But the point is that what you are eating to soothe yourself depends on many factors. Alright, coming back to our hero of the blog post today. Like one of those days when I was in some bad mood, I started to crave for rice pudding. But then I didn’t want to gobble down a lot of sugar with every spoonful. And that is how this delicious coconut rice pudding happened. The flavors are inspired by Asian flavors. I simmered the rice pudding on very low heat for about an hour with some bruised lemongrass stalk and grated fresh ginger. The lemongrass gave this rice pudding a lovely scented aroma which brought the coconutty flavor to the next level. And I just didn’t stop myself there. Because I had those lovely seasonal plums lying in my fridge, I roasted them gently with some vanilla bean and brown sugar to have with my coconut rice pudding. And I was all set to dig myself into my delicious bowl of comforting coconut rice pudding with roasted plums.
- 100 gm white rice
- 1 lemon grass stalk, bruised
- 600 ml coconut milk
- 200 ml skimmed milk
- 1 tsp grated ginger
- 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
- 8-10 red plums, halved
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
- Rinse the rice under cold running water. Place in a saucepan with the lemon grass, maple syrup, ginger and coconut and skimmed milk. Bring to the boil, stirring. Reduce heat to very low and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally to prevent it from sticking. Remove and discard the lemon grass and set aside to cool.
- While rice pudding is being cooked, preheat oven to 170 degree C. Lay the plums in a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Mix brown sugar with vanilla seeds and sprinkle over plums. Place the scraped vanilla bean pod in the centre of baking tray and roast the plums in oven for about 25 minutes, until juices start to run. Let cool completely.
- Chill the rice pudding and serve with roasted plums.