Barry Family Dinner: Brûléed Rice Pudding

It’s a big week for us. The Milwaukee Irish Fest is coming up this weekend and I’m going back to work mid-week. The best part (for me and the kids) of all of this is that Paul’s sister Cecilia and her husband Michael have been in town to visit and help out with the Festival. Sunday night we had a family dinner, which we try to do most weekends, but it was extra special this time with our guests, perfect weather and the anticipation of the busy week ahead. I made too much food because I forgot that Uncle Mike had to get back to Charlotte for the work week and I kept miscounting plates, bowls and forks all night long, setting a place for him even though I knew he was on a flight.  We ended up eating more than we thought we would, Paul was able to keep Eve from crying all evening long and it was so, so nice, to spend the time together.  Yes, I won the in-laws lottery.

For dinner we had mustard-balsamic glazed chicken, a burrata, basil and heirloom tomato salad, grilled vegetables, including amazing corn from the Farmer’s Market (nothing like superfresh corn in the summer), and for dessert, bruleed rice pudding with dried cranberries.  It was like summer on a plate and made me wish I could eat local heirloom tomatoes and fresh corn all of the time.

About a year ago I bought a kitchen blow torch to make creme brûlée with and now I’m always looking for an excuse to brûlée stuff. We love rice pudding around here, brûléed or not, but the sugar topping makes this homey dessert a little more fancy and adds texture. I gave Emmett a blow torch demo.  He called it my dragon fire blower and made me promise not to put it in his room when he went to bed.

This is my recipe for rice pudding. Doll it up with coconut, fruit, spices, whatever you like.  I love to add tea and chai spices or skip the brûlée and top it with poached plums or pears.  Here, I keep it simple with some vanilla, cinnamon and dried cranberries.

Brûléed Rice Pudding with Dried Cranberries

1 tablespoon butter

⅔ cups short grain rice (I used Japanese style sticky rice because that’s the short grain that I usually have around)

4½ cups whole milk

1 teaspoon salt

2 cinnamon sticks

½ cup loosely packed brown sugar

2 eggs

¼ cup dried cranberries

1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla paste

Turbinado sugar, for serving

Melt one tablespoon of butter in a heavy bottomed saucepan, add rice and cook over medium-low heat for a couple of minutes until all grains are coated in butter.

Add milk, cinnamon sticks and salt and turn heat up until milk-rice mixture begins to boil.

Once the mixture is boiling, turn heat down and simmer mixture for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionaly to make sure milk doesn’t scald, until rice is cooked through.

In a small bowl, whisk sugar and eggs together.  

Ladle ¼ to ½ cup boiling rice mixture into the eggs and sugar, stirring continuously.  

Whisk egg-sugar mixture into rice mixture and simmer until it thickens slightly.  Do not boil at this stage or you risk curdling. I keep the heat down to the lowest setting at this point.

Once pudding has thickened, remove from heat.  

Remove cinnamon sticks and stir in vanilla and dried cranberries.  

Transfer to a serving dish. Allow to cool slightly, then cover with wax or parchment paper to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Just before serving, remove parchment or wax paper and cover top of pudding with a thin sprinkling of turbinado sugar. Melt the sugar with a blow torch or place the dish under the broiler until the sugar is melted and serve.

Next weekend we will be away from the kitchen and at the Milwaukee Irish Festival. We hope to see you there.

Ice Cream

So we've been making a ton of ice cream around here this summer. Way too much. I currently have five flavors in my freezer. Five. Somehow there's not that much left in any of the (five) containers as our consumption rates have been similarly excessive. I have a bunch of 'reasons' for this:

1. I’m on maternity leave (huh? I know, I’m reaching but I usually don’t have this kind of time);
2. the heat (though it hasn’t been so hot lately);
3. we don't have to go out for ice cream (but we still do);
4. it's fun for the kids (though they aren’t always home when I make it).

Ok. Let's call a spade a spade.

I LOVE ice cream. I can never get enough and I don't really discriminate when it comes to flavors. I like them all. Once I put the bowl of the ice cream machine in the freezer, it's summer home, I can't control what happens next.

As you can see, this is not the ice cream that's the subject of this post. This is the ice cream that I am eating while making more ice cream. Shameless. 

When I saw Clodagh McKenna's recipe for brown bread ice cream, ice cream with little bits of caramelized brown bread in it, I had to try it. Now I want to get one of those bicycles with the coolers in the front and sell my ice cream at all of the summer festivals. Wouldn't that be fun(ny)? Maybe I could pedal off all of the extra calories.

This idea is genius. Make breadcrumbs out of stale bread. Coat them in butter and brown sugar and toast them in the oven. Flavor your custard style ice cream base with the caramelized crumbs. And save a few to use as a topping. The Bailey's (or any alcohol) helps to keep the ice cream from freezing too hard in the freezer but you can leave it out and just set the tub on the counter for a few minutes before scooping. Leave it in if you feel like you need an excuse not to share with your kids.

Brown Bread Ice Cream

For the Vanilla Custard Base

I use a vanilla custard base recipe that I have adapted to fit perfectly into the little ice cream machine I bought when I lived in Japan. You can use this recipe and instructions on the process of making the custard base. To that, I add Bailey's and the caramelized brown bread crumbs, making some extra crumbs to top the ice cream with.

1 batch of custard base (see above)

1-2 tablespoons Bailey's

For the Caramelized Brown Bread Crumbs

3 slices stale brown bread, toasted

2 tablespoons salted Irish butter

1-2 tablespoons brown sugar, loosely packed

To make the bread crumbs, toast the bread and break it up with your hands into small pieces or place bread in a ziptop plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin until coarsely ground.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Melt butter and mix with breadcrumbs until somewhat evenly coated.

I just tore the bread into small pieces with my hands. The texture is just a matter of personal preference.

In a bowl, mix the buttered breadcrumbs with brown sugar. Sprinkle the buttered, sugared bread crumbs onto a parchment lined baking sheet, spreading them out evenly.  Bake for about 10 minutes, stirring halfway through.  The sugar should be melted and the crumbs should be crispy and browned. Remove from the oven, let cool and store (you can make these up to a few days ahead) until you are ready to churn the ice cream.

Look! It's like brown bread granola. Exciting.

Definitely store these somewhere out of the way while you wait for your custard to chill.  I put them on a high shelf in the kitchen along with my other - less tempting - dry goods to prevent these little nuggets from getting consumed before churn-time.

Once your custard base has chilled, add 2 tablespoons of Bailey’s to the base and churn in your ice cream maker per the manufacturer’s instructions. Remember to place your ice cream container in the freezer ahead of time to pre-chill it. This helps minimize melting when you transfer your churned ice cream to the freezer.  A couple of minutes before the ice cream is fully churned, pour two thirds to three quarters of your brown bread crumbs into the machine and allow them to be dispersed throughout the ice cream. Reserve the rest to use as a topping.

This is how my ice cream looks when it's ready to take out of the machine. My machine starts making this loud clicking noise when it's finished. I have no idea whether or not that's typical ice cream machine behavior or not. Now I'm talking about my ice cream machine like it's my fourth child. Yikes. 

After the machine is done churning, remove ice cream and place in the freezer in your pre-chilled container to freeze more thoroughly. This usually takes at least a couple of hours though I also love the soft serve consistency of ice cream straight from the machine (I don’t discriminate when it comes to texture either). Scoop, top with more caramelized brown bread crumbs and enjoy!

Off to the freezer to firm up. 

We liked the contrast between the brown bread crumbs that were churned and frozen into the ice cream which were kind of chewy and the ones we sprinkled on top that were crunchy. 

Dinner on the driveway. 

Just like that: Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

View fullsize

Oh Chicago. One day we are all lamenting over the fact that we still need winter coats and then, without warning, it’s full on summer and we are sweltering in our tank tops and shorts.  Despite the lack of some nice spring weather to prepare us for the hot summer days ahead,  you’ll hear no complaints from me about the weather. Just like that, it’s summer and just like that, we went from a family of four to a family of five, one warm sunny Sunday in June.

Last weekend we zipped through the farmer’s market and picked up some rhubarb (at long last!), some strawberries, grape tomatoes, potatoes and a cute little bird feeder for the kids to paint.  I still had my mind on the Rhubarb Plum Crisp from Rachel Allen’s book Favorite Foods at Home so I adapted it by subbing strawberries for plums. My father and brother-in-law came over for dinner and helped us eat the crisp.  Our strawberries were those amazingly sweet little ones that make grocery store berries taste like watered down Kool-aid. Their sweetness worked well with the tartness of the rhubarb that I had been craving for weeks. The original recipe uses only all purpose flour but I used a full cup of almond flour in place of the same amount of all purpose.  The result was a deliciously nutty topping that made me feel just a little bit better about all that butter.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

Eight Servings

Adapted from Favorite Food at Home, by Rachel Allen

For the fruit:

4 tablespoons butter, unsalted

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 lb rhubarb, washed and sliced into 1/2-inch (2cm) pieces

1 lb strawberries, washed, large ones sliced, small left in tact

1 tablespoon honey

½ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 cinnamon stick, broken in half

1 half-inch wide strip lemon peel

For the topping:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup almond flour

6 tablespoons light brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons butter, unsalted, melted

1 tablespoon muscovado  sugar, for scattering on top

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC).

2. To make the fruit filling, melt the 4 tablespoons of butter in a large saucepan and stir in 1/4 cup brown sugar. Add the rhubarb and strawberries.

3. Add the honey, cardamom, cinnamon stick, and lemon peel, and cook for five minutes, stirring regularly.

4. Meanwhile make the topping. Mix together the dry ingredients and add the 12 tablespoons of melted butter, mixing quickly but lightly to form a crumbly texture.

5. Remove the cinnamon stick and lemon peel. Transfer the fruit mixture into a low baking dish, or just do it all in a low sided dutch oven like I did.  If your fruit gives off a lot of liquid, spoon some out and reserve for another purpose, then scatter the crispy topping on top. Do not press it down or it will get mushy. Scatter a tablespoon of muscovado sugar on top and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and the juices are bubbling.

6. Remove from the oven when the top is deep golden brown and you can plunge a paring knife into the middle and the knife meets no resistance, indicating the fruit is fully cooked.

Serve warm, with vanilla ice cream.

Eve showed very little interest in her first cooking lesson. 

We had a much more passionate response from our eaters.