Okay, I did spice. Apparently I still have some need for bland and festive though, because a chance Confined Cocktails mention of risalamande from Anne reminded me I'd meant to make it before Christmas. Upon enquiry, it's not Bad Danish Luck to do it after twelfth night, so I bought some pudding rice and got going. I've been more than a tad scattered this week. Maybe some warming pudding would be the answer?
First, make your rice pudding: pudding rice, hot water, and then loads of milk, stirring and a low simmer, covered. I did include vanilla pods and the faintest hint of sugar, both options in the recipe I have. (The vanilla pods have been sitting in my sugar bowl all year, so why not?)
You can of course eat hot rice pudding, and indeed I did last night. With a knob of butter, and with cinnamon sugar. Wowser. This was good.
But risalamande is more than this. It requires *cold* rice pudding. Which you then mix with chopped almonds and cream and a smidge of vanilla and sugar. Serve cold, with a hot fruit sauce.
My recipe is from Scandikitchen Christmas, so it tells me how to do the rice pudding base which works across all three Nordic nations, and then what different nations put on it when it's cold. I should be doing the Swedish option, ancestrally, but I didn't feel like oranges this week (and it's not called risalamande in Sweden, and I like the name in Danish). So I went for cherry sauce, the Danish version. I bought this, but it's an easy make if you have a tin of cherries.
A monstrous portion, as I couldn't fit all the mixed risalamande into my tupperware and was forced, FORCED to consume it this evening. I shall eat well this week.
Slightly in my defence, dinner was roast cauli with paprika and lemon, with a random salsa verde made of the ends of various herb packets plus garlic and the end of a jar of olives. With wholemeal pita.
A delicious and virtuous winter dinner, before you wreck it all with a mountain of cherry cream rice. I have no regrets, whether or not it settles my brain and nerves into some rather more focused state. It's delicious upholstery against winter glums.
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