Rice pudding

Many years ago when I was a sweet young thing, I embarked on my OE. My first job overseas was as a reporter on a country newspaper in Victoria, Australia. I was a city girl and working in a country town, population circa 8000 people, was something of a culture shock.

I lasted there three months before moving to the brighter lights of Adelaide in South Australia. But those three months had their moments.

I boarded with an English family who had emigrated a few years before. The husband worked as manager on a local farm. His wife spent her time planning what she would do when they moved on to a city. Unfortunately her husband didn't share her plans and behind her back went and bought himself some local farm land. At times I felt like the meat in the sandwich as they debated the wisdom of his purchase! I have to say I kind of sympathised with her...

She had one of those wonderful old Aga stoves and would spend her afternoons cooking up huge English dinners. There was always a large main course and that was enough to keep me happy for a week. But it would be followed by dessert. Not just a delicate little stewed apricot with a small scoop of ice cream. No, these were big English puddings - the sort that would enable a man to farm the land from dawn till dusk (unless of course he had a massive attack of indigestion, or needed to sleep off the carbohydrates).

I can still see them being triumphantly deposited on the dining table with a flourish. Bread and butter pudding, roly poly pudding, steamed pudding, tapioca, baked apples and custard, fruit crumbles, fruit sponges, spotted dick, rhubarb pie.

Rarely having room for dessert after a roast dinner or stewed chops or whatever farm meat the husband brought home, I would frequently pass on the sweet course. Except when there was rice pudding. I've had a passion for it ever since I was a child. It was the sort of dish mothers used to make in those post-War days because it could be baked in the oven along with a casserole.

A rice pudding is simplicity itself to make. The main requirement is a nice medium or short-grain (see picture) slightly sticky rice rather than something like basmati that remains in separate grains.

To me, an essential part of rice pudding is a good sprinkling of nutmeg on top. During the slow cooking this forms a kind of skin over the top of the pudding. Pierce it and you have all this wonderful creamy rice lurking below. It really does pay to have whole nutmegs and a little nutmeg grater so you get a wonderful fresh-flavoured nutmeg powder.

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