Lucky Food, Lucky Rice
Every year I make way too much rice for New Year's Day dinner. My family is Southern and I keep up those old traditions of eating food for luck on January 1. The whole plate is cooked for fortune and luck for the next year. We eat collard greens because they look like money on the plate. Black eye peas looked like coins to someone way back when, and they have always saved Southerners from starving when times were hard, so we eat those too. And pork, I eat it for my health, but most folks eat it because it symbolizes wealth. Everything gets cooked in lots of pork infused juice, the pot licker.
When you serve up a plate of pork and collards and peas there is a lot of liquid on the plate, and nothing soaks up that pot licker better than rice. So I make rice for New Years, lots of it.
After dinner we always have extra rice, wouldn't want to run out.
And just like we have a plan for our fortunes, we've got a plan for using the leftover rice, too. Lucky us, it makes a great dessert.
This year we made Leftover Rice Pudding for New Year's dinner.
Start with an old fashioned vanilla pudding
allrecipes.com/recipe/old-fashioned-vanilla-pudding/
I added a cinnamon stick to the pudding in the saucepan. Before the pudding sets up, fold it into about 2 to 3 cups of cooked leftover rice (less rice equals creamier pudding). Make sure you coat all of the rice with the pudding. Sprinkle the top with brown sugar and bake at 400 degrees until the sugar starts to bubble and caramelize. Tastes great warm or cold.
I recently had another great dessert that would be a terrific way to use leftover rice.
Callas is a sweet fritter (or they can be savory) made from leftover rice, milk, sugar, flour, and eggs. The sweet version is fried and then dusted with powdered sugar like the one above that I had at Elizabeth's in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. Try this recipe at food.com. www.food.com/recipe/callas-94080
It never occurs to me to make rice just for desserts. So it's lucky that there is always leftover rice on New Year's Day. Works great with leftover Chinese take-out rice, too!
Happy cupcaking,
Alan and Karen
hellocupcakebook.com
When you serve up a plate of pork and collards and peas there is a lot of liquid on the plate, and nothing soaks up that pot licker better than rice. So I make rice for New Years, lots of it.
After dinner we always have extra rice, wouldn't want to run out.
And just like we have a plan for our fortunes, we've got a plan for using the leftover rice, too. Lucky us, it makes a great dessert.
This year we made Leftover Rice Pudding for New Year's dinner.
Start with an old fashioned vanilla pudding
allrecipes.com/recipe/old-fashioned-vanilla-pudding/
I added a cinnamon stick to the pudding in the saucepan. Before the pudding sets up, fold it into about 2 to 3 cups of cooked leftover rice (less rice equals creamier pudding). Make sure you coat all of the rice with the pudding. Sprinkle the top with brown sugar and bake at 400 degrees until the sugar starts to bubble and caramelize. Tastes great warm or cold.
I recently had another great dessert that would be a terrific way to use leftover rice.
Callas is a sweet fritter (or they can be savory) made from leftover rice, milk, sugar, flour, and eggs. The sweet version is fried and then dusted with powdered sugar like the one above that I had at Elizabeth's in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. Try this recipe at food.com. www.food.com/recipe/callas-94080
It never occurs to me to make rice just for desserts. So it's lucky that there is always leftover rice on New Year's Day. Works great with leftover Chinese take-out rice, too!
Happy cupcaking,
Alan and Karen
hellocupcakebook.com
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