Middle Eastern Rice Pudding

 

When I was in England this summer (with my friend Adriana who you may remember was one of the judges on the Great Blueberry Muffin Showdown), we stayed a few nights with my cousins.  We were very happy to be in a kitchen again, so we decided to make dinner and dessert as a thank you for letting us stay with them.  My cousin Alex cannot eat gluten and I didn't have any of my cookbooks with me, so I had somewhat limited options.  I settled on rice pudding.  As Alex is also diabetic, I figured I should make it sugar free, so I needed to make sure it was still flavorful.  I made a basic stove top rice pudding with arborio rice (also used for risotto) and skim milk.  I added orange zest (in large strips), whole cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods to the milk before I started cooking the pudding to flavor it without using sugar.

Making rice pudding is actually more similar to making oatmeal than risotto.  Unlike risotto you don't have to stir constantly and you add all the liquid at once.  But, that said, it is more finicky than oatmeal and does involve more stirring and more cooking time.  Anyway, while I prepared the pudding, Adriana shelled the pistachios and chopped them.

I fished out almost all of the cardamom (I missed a few, oops!) and all of the cinnamon and orange.  We then topped the pudding with the chopped pistachios, fresh cinnamon sticks, some powdered cinnamon and absolutely amazing dates from Harrods.

It was really delicious and the mixture of flavors was complex but still subtle enough that no single flavor overwhelmed the others.  And, I have to say I really didn't miss the sugar at all!