Portuguese · Dessert
Arroz Doce
- Easy
- 50 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, richness that coats and comforts, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- 200g short-grain rice (carolino, Portugal's pearl)
- 400ml water with a pinch of salt, lemon peel in wide strips, 1 cinnamon stick
- 700ml whole milk, warmed
- 150g sugar; 3 egg yolks (the Portuguese enrichment: this is not plain rice pudding)
- Ground cinnamon for the decorative crown
The skills inside
Tempering a custardRisotto method
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cook rice in the lemon-cinnamon water until absorbed.
- Add warm milk in stages, stirring, risotto-patience, 25 min, until creamy but still loose. 25 min
- Sugar in; then temper in the yolks off the heat: they turn it golden and silken.
- Pour onto shallow platters; when cool, dust cinnamon through a stencil in diamonds and lattices, the grandmother's signature.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tempering a custard 59 recipes
- The hot liquid went into the eggs a little at a time with constant whisking, and only then did everything go back to the pot.
- The heat under it stayed gentle throughout and it was never allowed to boil.
- Stirred continuously and right into the corners of the pan, where it thickens first and sets unnoticed.
- Judged by behaviour: it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- Taken off before it looks finished, and strained. Residual heat carries it the rest of the way, and a custard held on the heat until it looks right arrives past right.
Where it goes wrong The hot liquid went in too fast, or the pot went back over full heat to save time. The yolks set into threads before they could thicken smoothly, and a scrambled custard does not come back; straining hides a little of it and nothing hides the rest.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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