Milk and Egg Puddings

People often talk of milk puddings in a slightly disparaging way as reminiscent either of school or the nursery. It should not be forgotten that they can also be delicious. Rice (either whole, ground or flaked and brown as well as white), semolina, tapioca and sago are the most usual grains to use for milk puddings.

The best rice pudding I have ever had was made by my grandmother (who must have been one of the first health-food enthusiasts); she used brown rice and muscovado sugar and gentle, slow cooking to produce a nutty, creamy, caramel-flavoured pudding with a wonderful, shiny brown skin. But other ways of cooking and flavouring milk puddings can have their charms, too. An excellent and often somewhat lighter rice pudding can be made by cooking the rice on top of the stove, stirring it often. This pudding will not form a skin like baked rice pudding and is excellent eaten cold. You can add cream and flavouring such as cinnamon to taste while you are cooking the rice, and you may stop cooking it the moment the rice is the exact texture you want. You can also stir in natural yogurt or whipped cream at the end.