Sticky Date Rice Pudding (no wheat, no dairy, no refined sugar)

OK, I know I’ve been slacking recently. Yeah, sure so I may have reached my Club10 award at Slimming World and be just 15lbs away from my target weight, but what is that when there are puddings to be eaten and written about? But sometimes it helps to have a little kick up the bum to get things going again, and my kick came in the form of a challenge from someone I follow on Twitter, and there’s nothing that I like more than a challenge*.

DK (@mediasnackers) sent me a tweet that said “do you know any pudding recipes which don’t have wheat, dairy or sugar in for me?” and for some reason he seemed to think that my suggestion of a fruit salad was a bit of a cop-out. So I asked a few more questions (what about soya milk? honey? etc) and got my thinking cap on, and came up with something that I think is really rather good. And the instructions are so simple that they can be reduced down to 2 steps – so anyone can eat it, and anyone can make it too!

Let me introduce you to my sticky date rice pudding.

sticky date rice pudding

Ingredients:

Pudding rice (about 1oz per person)
Rice milk (about 1/2 pint per person, and you could, of course, replace it with soya milk, or cows milk if you prefer)
Coconut Cream (about 15g per person, or ‘a good squeeze’ out of one of the Pataks sachets)
Tamarind Paste (1 teaspoon)
Honey (2 teaspoons)
And a handful of dates, chopped

1. First, soak the dates in some hot water for a couple of minutes, then drain the water away.
2. Now combine all the ingredients in a saucepan, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer until the liquid has been absorbed, the rice is cooked and you are left with a pan of sticky gooey yummyness.

You’ll want to give it a regular stir to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan, and if it looks like you’re going to run out of liquid sauce before the rice is cooked, then add a little more milk as you go along, but other than that, that’s all there is to it.

All amounts are approximations (and yes, I know I use metric and imperial measurements here), and if you want it to be more (or less) sweet/coconutty/tamarindy then just add more (or less) of those ingredients.

I’m now off for a 5 mile walk, to do penance for the sheer indulgence of it all (and because I’m in training for a walking marathon) – enjoy.

*this is not, strictly speaking, true. There are actually lots of things I like more than a challenge, like, um pudding.

Hope Street Feast – the pudding edition

So yesterday was the 5th annual Hope Street Feast, and you’re diligent pudding blogger thought it was only right to head down there and see what sort of sweet things were on offer. She was not disappointed.

First up, I headed to one of the stalls that was selling fudge, and got myself a generous portion of chocolate and dairy fudge. This was supposed to be shared by me and Him, but as it had got a bit squished and warm in my pocket before I got it down to him, I ended up finishing all of it. Waste not want not, eh?

chocolate dairy fudge

Then I thought I’d have a play on the tombola, all proceeds going to support the feast for next year, an excellent cause – and I won!! Hurrah. There were many delicious treats on offer from various stalls and shops, but I decided to show a little restraint and opted for one of the fruit baskets – I am still on a diet after all. This lasted a whole 2 days in our flat before being totally emptied.

tombola fruit

From the tombola it was a short hop to the stall outside the London Carriage Works, where they were selling meringues. I’d been tipped off about these by a friend that I bumped into earlier that day, and they were indeed yummy. They were flavoured with lavender, which made them taste like the inside of your grandma’s airing cupboard, but in a good way. They were comforting and nostalgic and surprising and gooey and, well, yummy.

lavender meringue

And last but not least, we paid a visit to The Pudding Compartment stall, where I have to admit, I blagged a pudding for me and Miss Cay to share.  When they’re not at places like the Hope Street Feast, they do mail order puddingshad a nice selection of single serving puddings on offer, but we decided to go for the Welsh Whisky Cheesecake, as they are based up in that neck of the wood.  I have to admit, it didn’t last long between us, it was light and creamy, and tasted nicely of the whisky without being too boozy. The base was maybe a little too crumbly, but as we were eating it straight out of the pot, it hardly mattered.

welsh whisky cheesecake

At the moment my nearest stockist for The Pudding Compartment is in Chester, so until someone in Liverpool pulls their finger out and gets them on the shelves (which can’t be too long after yesterday, if everyone else liked them as much as we did) I’ll just have to get some sent through the post – the steamed ginger pudding on their site is calling to me.

Clotted Cream Rice Pudding – almost really lovely

clotted cream rice pudding ingredients

clotted cream rice pudding ready for the oven

clotted cream rice pudding fresh from the oven

So close, sooooooooo close.

So, I was starting with this recipe for slow baked clotted cream rice pudding. A ludicrous concoction if ever there was one at 900+ calories per portion. And I thought I would try to shave at least some of those calories off by substituting the double cream for something. My logic here was quite simple, if I had to get a pot of double cream, I’d be left with left-over double cream and I’d have to use that up in another massively diet unfriendly pudding. So I thought I’d swap it out for some fromage frais, which is more or less the same consistency and does get used for some diet sauces like kormas.

This was an error. See, as I have now learned, the thing to do when cooking with fromage frais is to add it at the end of the process and not to let it boil, otherwise it, well, it curdles.

Surprisingly, the rice pudding was still pretty nice. Well, I say surprisingly, it was after all clotted cream, full fat milk, sugar, butter and vanilla – it would take something fairly catastrophic to stop that combination seducing the tastebuds. But my god were the portions tiny. 25g of dry weight rice per person? Really? We ended up with a couple of spoonfuls each, and for the calorific load, that really is quite terrifying.

I will get rice pudding right though, you’ll see.

Never look a gift of clotted cream in the mouth

Some days are worth coming into work for, like today when my lovely colleague @misscay had a box of clotted cream delivered to her desk, as a freebie (one of the perks of being a food writer on a rather spiffing blog). And being the generous soul that she is, she lobbed one of them my way – and when I see clotted cream, I think of one thing and one thing only.

scones!

Not really a pudding, I know, but oh my word were they lovely. I’m frankly doing rather well to have written anything other than nom nom nom nom nom in this post.

Now I’m not such a big pig that I’d eat an entire pot of clotted cream with scones (ok I am, but I’m trying to learn about self restraint), so there’s about half a pot left over. So I’m thinking that I might face my rice pudding demons, and make this lovely looking clotted cream rice pudding this weekend – 972 kcalories? I’ll have seconds.

Pudding for breakfast

Well the good news is that at weigh-in last night not only did I get my 1 stone award, and win the bet with my sister, but I walked away with the fruit basket too (it normally goes to the slimmer of the week, but she didn’t stick around for the actual meeting) – so this morning I’m using some of it to go into my breakfast of stupidly indulgent, but slimming world friendly porridge. I’ve heard that some people, north of here, just add salt to their porridge oats, but as far as I’m concerned salt is for chips – here’s my Berry Porridge.

Berry Porridge

That’s porridge (Healthy Extra B), fruit (I used a banana and a handful of berries, which, as it’s cooked, you can either think of as another HEB, or give a small syn value, no more than 1.5) water (free, obviously) skimmed milk (Healthy Extra A), cinnamon (free) and a teaspoon of honey (1 syn).

No more than 2.5 syns in the whole thing, and it will keep you going till lunchtime no problem.

See that?

fruit guilt

That’s pre weigh-in guilt that is. Also, weigh-in tomorrow is the moment of truth in a little wager with my sister – there’s a slap up meal at stake depending on which of us has lost the most weight over the past 8 weeks or so (yes, I know rewarding weightloss with an enormous meal is a little peverse, but hey, we like food, it’s how we got in this state to start with). So my plan is to eat half of this this evening, get rid of it tomorrow (ahem) and then only eat light waterless food tomorrow before weigh-in. That probably counts as cheating doesnt it?

Poached Pears – The Orchard, Liverpool

Poached Pears - The Orchard, Liverpool

There are a lot of things that I like about The Orchard. I like the fact that they have a cider menu, I like the fact that when I ate there it was at a massive discount because they promote themselves via GroupOn, and I really like the poached pears I had for pudding (I liked the rest of the meal too, but Sea Bass has no place on a pudding blog).

The contrast of the delicate flavour of the pears and the robust flavour of the prunes worked wonderfully, as did the textural combination of the ice cream and nut brittle, it was delighfully light, but still left me feeling more than satisfied.

My only gripe with The Orchard is that it’s still in the middle of nowhere. Ok so that’s an exageration, it is smack bang in the middle of the Baltic Triangle, which may well be the new best place in Liverpool in 5 years time, but at the moment, it feels a little like it’s been plonked in the middle of an industrial area by mistake. Not so bad if you’re heading there by car (and they do have a sizeable car park) but if you are a bus, bike and foot girl like me, it can seem like a bit of a diversion.

That being said, I’m prepared to be diverted again, even if only for the cider selection.

Lardy Cake – David Mellor Cafe, Derbyshire

Lardy Cake and Butter

Last Easter I took myself off walking in the Peak District for a few days, and at the end of my trip I found myself back at Hope (where I was to catch my train home), with an hour and a half to kill before I had to be at the station.  So I took a wander into the David Mellor visitor centre and cafe.

“David Mellor?” you say “Isn’t he that politician that was caught with his pants down in the 90′s? Why does he have a visitor centre?”

Well yes, and no. That chap was indeed called David Mellor, but this place is dedicated to the work of David Mellor the cutler and industrial designer. You actually know more about his work than you think, because as well as some lovely knives and forks, he also designed a lot of the street furniture that we see as we go about our daily lives – street lighting, bus shelters, public seating, litter bins and traffic lights.

Anyway, back to the Lardy Cake.

I was introduced to Lardy Cake by a carbohydrate obsessed friend of mine, and while you might be hoping that the name is somewhat of a misnomer, it’s not, the primary ingredient in Lardy Cake is, indeed, lard. It’s rather like a fruit bread, but with lots of lard in it. The recipe I came across involves making up a dough, rolling it out, sprinkling a layer of lard on the dough, then folding it over and rolling it out again, sprinkling more lard, folding it over and rolling it out, sprinkling yet more lard on it, and folding it over and rolling it out again.

So it’s not an everyday sort of dish, but I figured as I’d spent 5 days traipsing across hill and dale I could afford to treat myself. And it was a treat too, with a generous layer of butter (there’s really no point in worrying about additional calories here) and washed down with a lovely pot of tea.

A bad day for pudding

Oh woe is me, I woke up this morning with one thing and one thing only on my mind – rice pudding.

Now I’m not saying that my mum is a bad cook, but as children we did apparently equate the sound of burnt toast being scraped over a bin with breakfast, but one thing she did really well was rice pudding (the other thing was maccaroni cheese). Creamy, lovely, wonderful rice pudding.

So, I looked at a few recipes and decided to feel my way to a nice rice pudding, playing it by ear. This may have been error one. Then I realised that we had no pudding rice, so looking at the selection of rice that I did have I opted for risotto rice, this may have been error two (although at least I didn’t go for the wholegrain). Then I thought blueberry and rosemary would make a nice combination, which it might well do, but it didn’t today.

The first attempt ended up with what essentially looked like a blueberry and rosemary rice omelette, not good at all. So I binned that and started again, this time with less egg (and I ditched the rosemary too, swapping it for some vanilla), but after 25 minutes this too was much too dry, and it was too late to add more milk without ending up with a nasty texture, so again, it went in the bin.

blueberry and rosemary boak

By this point I was wondering whether it might not be an idea to just follow a recipe properly, so I decided to set aside the rice and go for a nice simple slimming world pudding – Cinnamon Plums, from the 100 Delicious Desserts book. This is essentially a couple of plums baked in a custard made with low-fat yoghurt and an egg yolk (1 syn because you’re cooking the plums).

Following the recipe to the letter it went into the oven in a baine marie for 30 minutes, but when I took it out and gave it a prod it was far from set, so I put it in for another 5 minutes, and it was firmer, cooked, but still not in any way ‘set’. However, my ability to wait had long-deserted me, so I retrieved it, and tucked in. You can see in the picture below that the custard had started to break up in the plum juice – it looks a bit like it had curdled, but it hadn’t, it actually tasted very nice.

plum in custard

So, 3 attempts, and only one of them was partially successful, which is more than a little disappointing, to say the least. Perhaps I need to perfect some basic recipes before I start playing around with them too much.

The least disappointing fruit salad in the world

Aaah Friday, the weekend is nearly here and it’s the day my pal and I go out to lunch. And as I’m also out for a meal this evening, my usual ‘sod the diet’ resolve has been somewhat weakened. This doesn’t mean I’m turning down pudding of course, but it does mean that with a slightly heave heart I ordered the fruit platter.

Heavy, that is, until this arrived…

ego fruit platter

Would you look at that?!?  That’s strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, apple, pear, kiwi, melon, pineapple, plum and mango, with chocolate, orange blossom honey and yoghurt dipping sauces. Even the arrival of my friend’s panna cotta didn’t dampen my enthusiasm (although I did sneak a spoonfull and it was very nice).

ego panna cotta

I’d estimate that that’s probably at least 3 or 4 of my five a day right there, if not all 5, or maybe 6. It was all fresh and juicy, and the sauces were really, really nice. I could happily eat mango in chocolate sauce until the day I die, and whatever was in that orange blossom honey dip, was potentially addictive – I entirely failed to leave any of it in the pot.