Vivi briefly mentions Lesson #13

Really quick -- a week ago, I made the Duck with Garlic, Tomatoes and Olives. It is very easy, and very tasty. Note that the recipe serves 4, not 6, as every other recipe in the book does. (We invited RJ over, and the meat was a little stretched. We had no leftovers.)

I was disappointed before cooking the dish, because I prefer sweet sauces with duck, and this is not. But even so, this was really good, and I want to make it again. We had lots of sauce left over, which I couldn't figure out how to use, so I recommend serving it with rice or noodles. We ate it with a loaf of half-whole wheat No-Knead Bread, which was quite good for soaking up sauce.

I skipped the Marinated Sea Bream with Fresh Dill, and served cheese (some gruyere, some stilton with apricots, and some other that was on hand) and another packet of the gravlax I made and froze last September.

Instead of the Crêpes with Red Currant Jelly (which I will make in future), I finally made the Riz à l'Imperatrice (or Empress Rice Pudding), according to the directions in Lesson #12. Cook rice in water briefly; cook it the rest of the way in milk. Macerate dried fruit in kirsch. Make a crème anglaise, add gelatin and whipped cream to make a bavarian cream. Fold the cooked, cooled rice, the macerated fruit, and the bavarian cream together, slop into a charlotte pan and chill.

But you're not done yet. Melt red currant jelly, add gelatin, and then pour it over the unmolded pudding, and let chill some more before serving.

My bavarian cream wasn't setting, so I folded everything together and put in the charlotte pan anyway. This meant (I reverse-engineered later) that the rice sank to the bottom, leaving a 2-inch layer of simple bavarian cream at the top of the pan.

That meant that when I unmolded it, the heavier rice part squashed down the lighter cream, making the pudding into kind of a turban shape (the Texan said it was a crown, thank you).

It is very rich, and the red currant jelly adds something to the flavor, offsetting the rich blandness with a slight sharp crispness. Still, I think I like my rice pudding the old-fashioned, just-cook-rice-in-milk way. Others (Girl-Child, resident Brother) loved it.

Note about the fruit. The recipe calls for "candied fruit", and I just don't think that means the candied orange peels, crystalized citron, and alien-green-colored cherries and pineapple that we find here. I spent some effort trying to find the sorts of candied fruit that we saw in southern France, (photo taken at the Nice Old City Market in 2004) but to no avail. In the end, I used a mixture of raisins, currants and chopped apricots. I love raisins in rice pudding usually, but this blend didn't work. The apricots and raisins essentially melted, the currants didn't soften despite hours in kirsch and then pudding.

Next time someone I know goes to France, I'm requesting they buy me a small packet of candied fruit, and I'll try making (my own version of) rice pudding with them. nudge nudge wink wink

The Bride finds Menu 12 Ho-Hum

No pictures because, frankly, it wasn't that special. I didn't do the Oeufs, used chicken instead of veal and canned broth instead of home-made (tasted great) and made a different, simpler rice pudding (less decorative, but divinely flavored). I served it with whole wheat couscous, not home-made fettucini, which I couldn't have eaten. But the result was, as The Son of COG pointed out, no different than our usual meals.

Therein lies the rub: if I cook the recipes as written, I can't eat them. If I make changes to be more consistent with our diet, they are not special.

I have no idea what to do about this. Does anyone else have any brilliant insights?

The Jacques Pepin rice pudding, was fabulous. Extremely simple to make, amenable to those watching their calorie intake, and delicious. It was, if possible, even easier to prepare than regular rice pudding. Here's the recipe:

Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding with Dried Fruit

4 cups whole or nonfat milk, plus additional milk if needed
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup long-grain white rice
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
3/4 cup diced (1/2 inch) dried fruits (raisins, apricots, figs, apples, cranberries, cherries etc.)
3/4 cup yogurt or sour cream (optional)

1) Bring the milk, sugar, vanilla to a boil in a saucepan. Add the rice, mix well, and bring back to the boil. Cover, reduce teh heat to very low, and simmer for about 40 minutes, or until the rice is very soft. The mixture should still be soup at this point; if it is not, stir in enough milk to make it so.

2) Add the lemon rind and dried fruits to the pudding, mix and set aside until it has cooled to room temperature. At this point much of the extra soupiness is absorbed and it's wonderfully creamy.

3) Spoon into four dessert dishes. If desired, top each dessert with 1 or 2 TBSPs of yogurt or sour cream.